Spared?

I know that LAT writer, Barbara Demick, actually is in Bejing, but I don’t think that the language is involuntary

The Americans are doing it again, mystifying the masses here with their weird, weird presidential elections.

To the Chinese, who are spared by the one-party Communist system of such complications as electoral colleges and party caucuses, the spectacle unfolding in the United States is not a very tempting advertisement for democracy.

Yes, why bother the people with selecting the leaders of their country? It is such a burden to have to come down on one side of an issue.

The next few paragraphs show that the Chinese official news bureau is rather exactly like our MSM: Fake photos, bullshit pregnancy stories, biased photos with poor captions and no context, etc..

Stranger than fiction, indeed.