China on Tuesday slammed US Vice President JD Vance for referring to the Chinese people as “peasants” in an interview that has drawn widespread ire and ridicule on China’s internet – and comparisons with Vance’s own self-proclaimed “hillbilly” background.
Speaking to Fox News last Thursday, Vance defended President Donald Trump’s market-hammering tariffs and railed against the “globalist economy.”
“What has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, it’s based on two principles – incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us,” Vance told news show “Fox & Friends.”
“To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”
Asked about Vance’s comments at a regular news briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: “It’s both astonishing and lamentable to hear this vice president make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks.”
Clips of Vance’s interview made their way to the Chinese internet this week, drawing an intense backlash in a country where factory floors are lined with industrial robots, cities are embracing homegrown electric vehicles and remote counties are connected by a nationwide web of high-speed railways.
“This true ‘peasant’ who came out of rural America seems to have a lack of perspective,” said Hu Xijin, the influential former editor-in-chief of state-run tabloid Global Times, in a post on microblogging site Weibo. “Many people are urging him to come and see China for himself.”
A hashtag on Vance’s remarks became the top trending topic on Weibo on Monday night. By Tuesday afternoon, it had racked up 140 million views.
“Look, this is their true face — arrogant and rude as always,” said a comment with 2,900 likes.
“We may be peasants, but we have the world’s best high-speed rail system, the most powerful logistics capabilities, and leading AI, autonomous driving, and drone technologies. Aren’t such peasants quite impressive?” another said.
Others noted the irony of Vance’s comments given his own working-class upbringing as depicted in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
In the book, Vance chronicles a childhood plagued by poverty, abuse and his mother’s drug addiction and spent partly in Appalachia, a corner of the United States he felt had been forgotten by wealthy elites. The book by Vance – a venture capitalist before his foray into politics – caused a sensation after Trump’s first election win and was widely seen as an explanation for the billionaire’s rise among the White working class.