Obama Doing 'Insipid Job', China Paper Says ahead of Visit

China's state-run media on Wednesday decried Barack Obama as a banal leader who has done an "insipid job", days ahead of a visit by the U.S. president.

The editorial in the Global Times, which has close ties to China's ruling Communist Party, came as U.S. election results showed the Republicans taking control of the U.S. Senate away from Obama's Democrats.

"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-trail mantra. 

"But he has done an insipid job, offering nearly nothing to his supporters."

"U.S. society has grown tired of his banality," it added.

Although the U.S. economy has improved gradually since the 2008 recession, the national mood is far from buoyant, with a CNN exit poll on Tuesday showing 54 percent of voters disapproved of how Obama was handling his job.

The U.S. president will be in China from November 10 to 12 for a two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, followed by a state visit.

The Global Times took aim at his foreign policy, arguing that Obama took "U.S. 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.

The paper noted the "many thorny problems" Obama has encountered during his six years in office, including the "limited tolerance and acceptance" he has received as the 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, and suggested 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 paper wrote. "Is this their problem or the problem of the U.S. system?"

"With China's rise, we gradually have the ability to have a clear understanding of the U.S.," the paper concluded. "The country is too lazy to reform."