Vice President JD Vance’s comment about Chinese people has esclated online tension between the US and China over a back-and-forth trade war.
“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 Lawrence Jones on news show “Fox & Friends” on April 3.
“To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” Vance continued.
It took some time, but clips of Vance’s interview went viral across the Chinese social media over the following weeks and drew intense backlash. By April 7, a hashtag on Vance’s remarks became the top trending topic on Weibo, China’s Twitter-adjacent social media platform, and racked up a total of more than 150 million views by April 18.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian responded to the comments during a press conference on April 8: “It’s both astonishing and lamentable to hear this vice president make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks.
The internet fire storm soon followed, and the anger against Vance spilled over into discussions related to US tariffs on China.
In a dramatic speech about the tariffs that has racked up millions of views, Xia Baolong, a Chinese politician and director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, ended his talk by hitting back at Vance.
“Let those American peasants wail in front of the 5,000 year-old civilization of the Chinese nation,” Xia said.
“Vance once said that the Chinese are ‘peasants.’ This real ‘peasant’ who came from the American countryside seems to have some defects in perspective,” wrote Hu Xijin, the influential former editor-in-chief of state-run paper Global Times, on a Weibo post discussing the possibility of a trade decoupling between China and the US.
“Look, this is their true face — arrogant and rude as always,” wrote one Weibo commenter who racked up more than 3,000 likes.
“We are peasants, but we have the best high-speed rail system in the world, the most powerful logistics capabilities, and the world’s leading AI technology, unmanned driving technology, drone technology, etc.,” wrote another Weibo commenter. “Such peasants are still quite powerful.”
Some more politically savvy commenters also pointed out the irony in Vance’s remarks, considering his own working-class roots as described in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
In the memoir, Vance recounts a childhood marked by poverty, abuse, and his mother’s struggle with addiction, much of it spent in Appalachia — a region he portrays as neglected by affluent elites. The book was widely seen as appealing among the white working class and as an explanation for the billionaire’s rise.
“Vice-President Vance, don’t forget,” wrote a Chinese blogger on Zhi Hu, a Chinese micro-blogging platform, “a peasant gave birth to you!”
The White House did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
