BEIJING, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- China's official news agency says it is hoped with the U.S. presidential election there'd also be a "pause in the China-bashing game" in the United States.
While giving extensive coverage to the U.S. presidential election and quickly reporting U.S. television networks' projection of Barack Obama winning a second term, Xinhua said this year's U.S. campaigns marked "the first time that the China topic has been so frequently debated, as pointing fingers at China became an easy and convenient way for the two candidates to score political gains while avoiding taking responsibility for mishandling the domestic economy."
The article said Republican Mitt Romney had often mentioned designating China as a currency manipulator and Obama "rarely missed an opportunity to tout his 'trophy' achievements of getting tough with China. It said the presidential debates had fallen into "a vanity fair for China-bashers competing to denigrate their second-largest trade partner."
With the elections over, Xinhua said it is time for the president-in-waiting "to tone down his tough rhetoric and adopt a more rational stance."
The article also reminded that as the world's largest and second-largest economies, the United States and China "cannot afford to grapple with the backlash of any severe confrontations in any arena" and that an "an all-out economic war will be a disaster for China and the U.S."
Xinhua reminded that China's 18th Communist Party congress, starting Thursday, will see the country's once-in-a-decade leadership change. Also, it said, guidelines on how to achieve sustainable development through more reforms and "on how to peacefully coexist with the rest of the world" were expected to be unveiled.
"Within these guidelines, the U.S. should be able to identify more opportunities to partner with China," it said.
Separately, the People's Daily, the party mouthpiece in an article discussing the role of money, said this year's U.S. congressional and presidential elections became the most expensive in U.S. history.
"While rich people are throwing loads of money into the presidential election, ordinary Americans are worried about their own financial conditions," the article said, adding in the past two decades, the income of middle-class Americans has been on the decline.
"Rich people are enjoying greater influence in politics, while the rights of ordinary voters are being damaged ...," the article said.
"Americans should remember that money politics seldom support reforms," it added.
