The US Vice President appeared on Fox News last week, where he defended Trump’s widespread 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 said. “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.” Clips of Vance’s interview have just hit the Chinese internet this week, and the 40-year-old is receiving intense backlash for his “ignorant” comments. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said: “It’s both astonishing and lamentable to hear this vice president make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks.” On Monday night, a hashtag on Vance’s remarks became a top trending topic on Weibo, often referred to as “China’s Twitter”. 

“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?” one user wrote. Others noted the irony of Vance’s comments, given his own working-class upbringing, that he often referenced in his memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy’.

Vance claims that his childhood was plagued by poverty, abuse and his mother’s drug addiction.

In response to Trump’s most recent tariff threat of making the US levy on Chinese good 104 per cent, The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has said that the US was guilty of “blackmail” and vowed that China would “fight to the end.” The White House has said that the 104 per cent tariffs on imports from China will take effect just after midnight tonight.