With exactly a month left for the voting to elect the next US president, an influential Chinese newspaper broke into a rant against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, dismissing the US elections as duplicitous drama.
Global Times, the Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote an editorial branding the US election as a drama and criticizing Hillary for her media manipulation and Trump for his alleged sexist and racist stance.
The newspaper article arrives at the conclusion that the next president of the US will either be an insolent populist or someone who raked in money in the name of campaign funds.
"She raked in money in the name of Democratic Party fundraising, and used the money for her own campaign and defaming other candidates in her party," the editorial reads.
It also showers lampoon on Trump as well: "He attacks Muslims and is suspected of sexism. He either had suffered great losses in business or evaded huge amounts of tax, but describes himself as an acutely intelligent and successful businessman."
However, the grandstanding editorial piece does allow the two candidates the benefit of the doubt, but then passes on the blame to the very electoral system in the US, which it says is built on the old game of discrediting the opponent.
"It may be the US election system that made them fierce. They describe each other as villains, because they want to manipulate public opinion in order to win the presidential race," the article says, adding that in many other democracies (maybe China, one wonders...) discussion on policies take the centre stage.
The articles ends with a musing on the future of democracy --"The question of how democracy should be practiced is far from being answered."
