China’s state-run media yesterday derided US President Barack Obama as a banal leader who has done an “insipid job,” days ahead of a visit by the leader of the world’s largest economy.
The editorial in the Global Times, which has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, came as US election results showed the Republicans had taken control of the US Senate away from Obama’s Democratic Party.
“Obama always utters: ‘Yes, we can,’ which led to the high expectations people had for him,” the Global Times wrote, referring to Obama’s 2008 campaign mantra. “But he has done an insipid job, offering nearly nothing to his supporters.”
“US society has grown tired of his banality,” the newspaper added.
The Global Times took aim at his foreign policy, arguing that Obama took “US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but left no peace.”
“Osama bin Laden was killed during his tenure, but the [Islamic State] has emerged from the Middle East,” it wrote of the Sunni extremist group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The paper cited the “many thorny problems” Obama has encountered during his six years in office, including the “limited tolerance and acceptance” he has received as the US’ first African-American president.
It also observed that his tenure came “in the midst of a time when partisan politics is becoming more extreme.”
Obama’s “best performance is empty rhetoric,” the paper said, suggesting that Western political systems were fundamentally flawed.
“Bush, who dared to do everything, and Obama, who dares to do nothing, come from different parties, but have the same destiny,” the editorial read. “Is this their problem or the problem of the US system?”
“With China’s rise, we gradually have the ability to have a clear understanding of the US,” the Global Times concluded. “The country is too lazy to reform.”
The US president will be in China from Monday to Wednesday next week for the APEC summit, followed by a state visit.
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