Vice president JD Vance recently used the term ‘peasants’ when he spoke about Donald Trump’s tariffs and how US borrows money from “Chinese peasants” to buy things that “Chinese peasants manufacture”. Beijing condemned the comment and said Vance lacked knowledge and respect. Now as the US-China trade war escalated with each hiking its tariff, a top Chinese official Xia Baolong in a television address said: “Let those peasants in the US wail before the 5,000 years of Chinese civilisations.”
Baolong is the dorector of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. In his statement on Hong Kong’s National Security Education Day, he said the US has isolated China by keeping a 145 per cent tax on Chinese goods. China does not buckle under pressure from bullying, they do not cause trouble, nor are they afraid of trouble, Baolong said using ‘peasants’ jibe against the US.
The US-China trade war saw a major escalation on Tuesday as China told its airlines to stop taking deliveries of jets from American aviation giant Boeing.
The order to stop accepting Boeing jets comes after China boosted its retaliatory tariffs on US goods to 125 per cent. That matches the level of tariffs that President Trump has placed on Chinese imports, although those taxes can rise as high as 145 per cent for some products. China’s tariffs would have more than doubled the price of US-made aircraft and parts, making the cost unaffordable, Bloomberg reported.
Boeing is scheduled to ship about 10 737 Max aircraft to Chinese carriers, including China Southern Airlines, Air China and Xiamen Airlines, Bloomberg reported, citing data from Aviation Flights Group. During the first quarter, Boeing delivered 130 aircraft in all, including more than 100 737 jets, the company said on April 8.
Trump addressed the report in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, writing that China “just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will ‘not take possession’ of fully committed to aircraft.”
