A top Chinese official has trolled Vice President JD Vance by using his own insult against him after the country hiked levies on U.S. goods.
In a TV address, Xia Baolong said that China was hitting back at the Trump Administration’s overbearing tariffs by instating import duties of 125 percent on U.S. imports.
“Let those peasants in the U.S. wail before the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization,” he said, commandeering the term Vance used in a Fox News interview earlier this month when he referred to “Chinese peasants.”
Baolong, according to Reuters, noted how Trump had singled out China when he reneged on super-charged “Liberation Day” tariffs, but kept a 145 percent tax on Chinese goods. The director of China’s executive arm in Hong Kong said the trade war is “extremely shameless” and aims to “take away Hong Kong’s life.”
Saying that China, including its special administrative region Hong Kong, does not buckle under pressure from “bullying,” Baolong then used Vance’s “peasants” jibe against the U.S.
He added, “The Chinese people do not cause trouble, nor are they afraid of trouble. Pressure, threats, and blackmail are not the right way to deal with China.”
Baolong’s official title is Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. He made the retort during a speech for Hong Kong’s National Security Education Day.
Xia Baolong, center, used Vance’s dig against him. / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images
It comes after the U.S. Vice President used the term during an interview on Fox News two weeks ago. “I think it’s useful for all of us to take a step back and ask ourselves, what has the globalized economy gotten the United States of America?” he said.
“Fundamentally, it’s based on two principles, incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things other countries make for us… We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things that Chinese peasants manufacture,” he said, in an attempt to defend Trump’s controversial tariff measures.
Clapping back days later, Beijing said Vance lacks “knowledge and respect.” Beijing “has made its position perfectly clear on its trade relations with the U.S.,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said during a press conference.
“To hear words that lack knowledge and respect like those uttered by this vice president is both surprising and kind of lamentable,” he added.
