Vance came under fire for defending President Trump’s market-shaking tariffs by using the term “peasants” to refer to the Chinese.

Chinese officials expressed their disapproval of US Vice President JD Vance’s “peasants” remark.

Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Vance defended President Donald Trump’s market-shaking tariffs by referring to the Chinese as “peasants.”

Vance stated, “What has the globalist economy brought to the US? Borrowing big amounts from other countries to buy things made by other countries for us. So, we borrow from Chinese peasants and buy what Chinese peasants produce.”

Regarding Vance’s comments in a press conference on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian mentioned, “It is both surprising and regrettable for this vice president to make such ignorant and disrespectful remarks.”

Vance’s comments were widely shared and criticized on Chinese social media platforms throughout the week.

Chinese social media users who reacted to the US vice president’s remarks defended that they possess cutting-edge technologies.

The tension between the two countries escalated further this week due to Trump’s tariffs.

Following Trump’s announcement of new tariffs last week, countries had issued consecutive responses. These tariffs included imposing a 34% new tariff on China. In response, China promptly announced it would retaliate with an equal amount of retaliatory tariffs on the US. Trump, in turn, threatened to impose a 50% additional tariff if China did not back down from this retaliation. As a result, the total tax imposed by the US President on China reached 104%.