Summary

China condemned JD Vance on Tuesday for calling Chinese people “peasants” in a Fox News interview, where he said, “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry labeled the remarks “ignorant and disrespectful.”

The backlash exploded on Chinese social media, garnering 140 million Weibo views.

Critics mocked Vance’s own “hillbilly” background and pointed to China’s advanced tech and infrastructure, highlighting rising tensions amid Trump’s trade war.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    7 days ago

    Rising tensions with China? I was told that’s what the Democrats were going to do if they won. 🤷‍♂️

  • Viskio_Neta_Kafo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    6 days ago

    Wonder how my friend who’s a Chinese immigrant who supports Trump and wanted to move to Singapore if Kamala won, feels about this.

  • dick_fineman@discuss.online
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    …I hate laughing at the downfall of my own country, but we definitely had it coming. I guess Chinese is the new lingua franca. Anyway, can someone help me understand why “Ma” in Mandarin means both weed and mom? How do I buy weed in Beijing?

    • Tkpro@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      7 days ago

      Mandarin has 4 (technically 5) tones so “ma” could be any one of those 4 different pronunciations. Furthermore, there are many completely different words that have the same tone/pronunciation. You just learn through context (same way as you do with English homophones)

      Mom in mandarin is 媽 (mā) whereas weed is 麻 (má). Colloquially you can also say 大麻 (dàmá) for weed.

      • k0e3@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 days ago

        Also, even before you go into the nitty gritty, there are homonyms in English too, so I don’t get why OP needs an explanation.

        • Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          6 days ago

          take this as you will, it is copy pasted from a site. most other sources i saw up to reading this said the same shit, so it is probably fairly accurate

          The Punishment for Marijuana in China

          Possession & Use: Individuals caught with marijuana or using marijuana will face administrative detention between 10 to 15 days, as well as fines of up to 2,000 yuan ($280 USD).
          
          Trafficking and Distribution: Selling or distributing marijuana is a crime. Punishment for those found guilty of handling over 50 grams includes a minimum three-year prison sentence, with life incarceration or death being possible penalties for larger weights (or in special cases).
          
          Marijuana Cultivation: Growing cannabis is another criminal offense, no matter how many plants. People arrested for growing marijuana could spend five years in jail and pay a hefty fine. For larger amounts, the punishment is even steeper.
          
      • Sonor@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 days ago

        you also use ma at the end of the sentences to form a question, to make it more confusing

      • 0x0@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 days ago

        Not to mention Chinese is quite the endeavor to learn, Esperanto would make way more sense.

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    7 days ago

    At some point, The Onion is going to have to close up shop. Because the absurdity of reality goes way beyond any satire they could dream up.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        6 days ago

        I remember that late night talk shows basically said that they don’t have to write comedy during Trump’s first term, because everything he was doing was comedy. This second term is far darker, but the lunacy of what’s happening on a daily basis makes all comedy and satire writers obsolete!

        Even actual news reporting on serious things like “explaining Trump’s tariffs”, end up being almost unbelievable, like you have to question whether what you’re listening to actually happened or not. Take a few minutes to learn about how Trump’s team came up with the tariff numbers, and you’ll think that you’re watching a Pixar movie.

  • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 days ago

    “China lashes out”

    Did they also “slam” home the fact that this is quite literally a world leader directly insulting the people of their closest rival? The bad news writing mixing with clown world politics is why all this seems so unreal to people, we are talking about a collapse of global world order but this reads like a TMZ piece.

  • Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    7 days ago

    I knew a girl from China and this is a huge insult to them. Being seen or labeled as rural is very embarrassing in their culture. She was ashamed because she grew up on her uncle’s pig farm.

    • Lit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      Farmers should be respected like other workers, they are feeding the world.

      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        6 days ago

        Many jobs are equally essential, I don’t get why people lose their asses over farmers specifically. It’s not like they feed the people out of charity, it’s their job to do so, and they get paid to do it.

          • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            14
            ·
            6 days ago

            I respect farmers as long as they’re not abusing migrant labour at illegal wages… So, I barely respect farmers.

          • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            6 days ago

            Well, in as much as they’re workers, yeah. When instead they’re landowners who illegally employ immigrants in order to pay them misery wages under the counter, fuck them. Farmers can be extremely reactionary and exploitative too, in a way that say, a supermarket cashier, simply can’t be.

            • Lit@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              6 days ago

              you are right but if you compare landowner you should compare to other owner like supermarket owner, store owner, there are also store owner who hire illegals worker/casher paying them miserable cash wages.

              • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                6 days ago

                Exactly my point: many farmers aren’t working class, they’re petit-bourgeois, which explains why there are so many reactionary tendencies among them. The farmers who are working class deserve praise, the ones who are landowners don’t.

    • Wanpieserino@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 days ago

      That’s just because all the development happened in cities. It’s easier to educate people when they live in a place with more funding.

      In 2020 or so the income inequality in china was equal to that of USA. Meaning that rural places didn’t have sufficient funding.

      But now the gini is down to 0,36. Meaning that there’s more widespread funding.

      China seems to be willing. While the inequality in USA is by design to attract capital

    • turnip@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      23
      ·
      edit-2
      7 days ago

      Meanwhile they all can be gulag’d at any time by their cruel dictator. They are all serfs in that aspect.

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        Man yeah, a country where you can be sent to an extra territorial jail with no due process and absolutely no recourse because the Man said so.
        That sounds scary!

      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 days ago

        What’s the incarceration rate in China? You guys are so fucking racist by swallowing the Anti-Chinese propaganda I swear to god.

        • turnip@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          5 days ago

          What’s the youth unemployment?

          The answer is it doesn’t matter, its a dictatorship that curates the truth.

          • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            5 days ago

            Have you not looked at western media during the GENOCIDE in Gaza? All of them collectively talking about “war in Israel and Palestine”, playing both sides, and curating the truth. For fuck’s sake, the average Republican in the USA lives in a completely different world of covid denialism, and thinks Elon performed an accidental Roman salute.

            • turnip@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 days ago

              Does Bernie Sanders get arrested and put in a reeducation camp for speaking out against it, as he would in China?

              • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                9 hours ago

                You surely heard about this

                Or about this

                Those are just two examples from the past month. Edward Snowden? Julian Assange? Do those names ring a bell?

                Also, Bernie is openly not against the genocide in Gaza. He openly talks of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and consistently talks of the “war” (not the GENOCIDE) using bothsideism

                • turnip@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  5 hours ago

                  We’ll touche, definitely weird to be talking about sending prisoners to El Salvador.

                  Though these terrorist laws were always going to be abused.

              • misteloct@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                5 days ago

                Why do you think the article is upset at Vance? He should have said “We borrow money from them to buy the things they manufacture.” Mentioning ethnicity or the word peasant is clearly racist. Even if he wanted to drive it home, he could have said “We borrow money from these victims of slavery…” but it wouldn’t have made any sense of course that way. It was racist.

    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 days ago

      The stereotype at that. A dumb hick from Appalachia. Which isn’t really fare to the people from there anymore. I’ve met serveral people from there who were fair minded and of reasonable intelligence. Just not that waste of breath.

  • fossilesque@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    These people are so stupid, I cannot. I wish I was as blitzed as they are so I didn’t have to pay attention either.

    • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 days ago

      No. Considering present-day America and China, one of those nations is far more reliable and far more stable.

      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        6 days ago

        ML, grad and hexbear are patiently waiting for your apologies. Sad that the line the US had to cross wasn’t imperialism and genocide, but losing decorum and imposing tariffs on treats…

        • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 days ago

          I’m an anarchist. I have always been at odds with the American state. I have been arguing against genocide apologists since the Palestinian genocide began. China is not a perfect state. They are authoritarian. They are at odds with me ideologically, and I have many criticisms of their past and present state. It’s possible to both acknowledge the extent of anti-china propaganda output by the American state, and also that China is a country that has its own history past and present of human rights abuses and workers rights abuses.

          • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            6 days ago

            Sure, you just mentioned “present-day”, and I thought maybe you referred that things have changed somehow. The US has always been imperialist and genocidal in nature, that’s why I got triggered by the “present-day” part of your initial comment and to what I was responding.

            • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              6 days ago

              I had a longer comment typed up initially but opted for something shorter since it was likely falling on deaf ears anyway. Yes, America was founded by genocidal colonialists. Genocide and Western imperialism are foundational American institutions.

  • Darkard@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    270
    ·
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    They are so laughably bad at this stong man act. They talk politics like either a particularly stupid playground bully or a guffawing British colonial moron from the time of the empire.

    Also, I suppose it would help if your opponents found you even the least bit intimidating

    • peteyestee@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      7 days ago

      I feel like it’s due to American privilege. They don’t understand the real world and authentic humanity.

        • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 days ago

          “Please stop capitulating to Trump and signing off of his bills, they’re fascists and you’re enabling them.”

          “Whats with the blame for Democrats? You must hate them for no reason.”

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            7 days ago

            The budget bill? Things were going to be worse if there was a shutdown that hands more power to the executive.

            • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              7 days ago

              The right wing spin of “Please stop doing what Trump wants you to do”?

              Or the right wing spin of “Stand up for the people who voted you in to stop Trump”?

            • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              7 days ago

              Like they were elected to do. I sure hope they’re doing more than the people trying to balance rent and food as they worry about if their senator is going to vote yes on Trump’s wants.

            • seejur@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              22
              ·
              7 days ago

              Thank fuck i would say. It literally their fucking job isn’t it? I have to card in every morning at 9am till 5. Their equivalent of card in is to oppose this shit, and to be perfectly honest, if I put as much effort as they did so far, my manager would have fired my ass for being a slacker

                • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  7 days ago

                  Not voted Yes on anything Republicans want, for starters.

                  No cabinet picks. No poison pills. No sneaking in expansions of power in yearly budgets. No tax cuts for the rich.

                  It costs as much energy to vote no as it does yes. But it doesn’t look good for the lobbyists’ bank accounts when they pay for Trump’s demands, so why even bother fighting for what’s right?

        • bassomitron@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          7 days ago

          They’re not blameless. They’re not entirely to blame, but they could’ve regulated social media to dampen disinformation when they had the chance.

          • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            6 days ago

            holy shit these fucking libs

            “They should have cracked down on how we’re allowed to communicate with each other”

            and not

            “They shouldn’t have committed a genocide” or “They shouldn’t have taken tens of millions of people off medicaid and doubled child poverty”

          • peteyestee@feddit.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            7 days ago

            You can’t tame the beast anymore. It’s in control and it’s bigger than governments. It’s more of poltergeist than something physical. Humanity is dying and the lifeboats that were government and religion have been overtaken.

            This is a whole new war beyond law and order.

            Natural law prevails, but many of us have been taught to not live by natural law. In turn we are losing the battle by being submissive to man-made law while the evil side of humanity thrives as it has never followed the law of man. They know the laws are for the poor and easily controlled and not meant for them.

            Or something?

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              7 days ago

              You can’t tame the beast anymore

              Yes we can. It requires effort, will and risk, though, and these are things Americans lack one of.

          • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            7 days ago

            The answer is never censorship. Look at who would be in charge of your ‘regulated’ social media now… It would be all of it instead of just the now hyper-regulated X.

            • bassomitron@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              7 days ago

              I didn’t say censorship. They could’ve regulated social media as actual Media outlets, which puts them on the hook for libel lawsuits if blatantly fake disinformation is advertised on their platforms. In other words, they have to follow the same rules as traditional media outlets.

              • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                7 days ago

                Social media isn’t a news source. Perhaps forcing them to remove all the ‘algorithms’ might be the answer. Keep the echo chamber effect to a minimum. Excluding people from being able to speak based on the current administration’s definition of blatantly fake disinformation is a bad idea. Once again, look who is now in charge of what is ‘blatantly fake’… They’d be suing the crap out of Lemmy under that law… Europe is all in on censorship, so we can only hope the Nazis don’t take over there again or we’ll be boxed in from every direction.