Beijing: China's internet censors have taken the unusual step of scrubbing an editorial from one of its own official newspapers after the piece prompted outrage online for suggesting Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was prone to "emotional" and "extreme" political views because she is unmarried and without children.

"As a single female politician, [Ms Tsai] does not have the emotional burden of love, the pull of 'family', of children," wrote the piece's author, Wang Weixing, who is a council member of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, a semi-official mainland body handling cross-strait relations.

"Her political and management style tends to lean toward the emotional, personal and extreme."