The heart of J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, holds a profound and surprising truth: it resonates deeply here in China, challenging the adversarial narrative he has since embraced. Writing not as a political adversary, but as a deeply affected reader, I see his story of upward struggle from hardship as a universal human story—the fight against inherited disadvantage that defines our truest common ground across continents.

The sharp irony is that this very memoir of universal struggle is now championed by a politician whose rhetoric seeks to divide that experience, framing millions who share the same climb as an existential threat. If Vance could truly see the lived experience of young people here, he would find fellowship, not an enemy.

The impulse to succeed and the fight for a better life transcend political campaigns.

The Echo of the Elegy

What struck me most forcefully in Hillbilly Elegy was the raw, chaotic, and deeply human tapestry of your early life—the addicted mother, the absent father, the foundational strength of your Mamaw, and the pervasive atmosphere of bottom-rung anxiety. This environment painted the fundamental struggle: how does one break the inherited cycle of poverty, addiction, and underachievement?

Your account vividly captured the devastation wrought by the hollowing out of America’s industrial middle class. This collapse extended beyond the loss of jobs, dissolving the community organizations, social capital, and the intrinsic dignity derived from stable labor. This bred a sense of fatalism and a pervasive, low-expectations environment where desperation often manifested as self-destructive behavior.

It is precisely this complex origin that explains the early toughness in your character—the silent refusal to accept the script handed to you. You sought a mechanism to impose order on external chaos, a framework to replace the broken one you inherited.

The defining, game-changing moment in your book was, without a doubt, your experience in the Marine Corps. This institution provided the necessary structure, discipline, and self-governance—the antidote, as you described it, to the instability of your youth. The military was the mechanism that allowed you to step outside the restrictive, inherited framework of your environment and rewrite your destiny, eventually leading you to Yale Law School. It was a rigorous, systemic shock that enabled upward mobility.

It is crucial to acknowledge, however, that the narrative of Hillbilly Elegy itself is highly controversial within the Appalachian region and among poverty scholars. Many critics and native Appalachians argue that Vance oversimplifies a complex economic reality, perpetuates harmful stereotypes of the working poor (such as the “lazy welfare queen” trope), and misattributes structural problems to “cultural fatalism.”

Furthermore, some biographers and critics have pointed out that Vance’s family income at certain points placed him outside the bounds of the deeply impoverished, challenging the memoir’s portrayal of his upbringing as one of consistent, severe poverty. This backlash highlights the danger of reducing an entire diverse region to one man’s anecdote of escape, regardless of the universal themes he sought to explore.

Millions of Fellow Travelers

Now, consider the ground upon which I stand. If you could look beyond the political talking points and into the lives of the people, you would see that millions share a strikingly similar foundational narrative.

We have a massive population of what are often termed Small-Town Test-Takers and Rural Youth. These young men and women grew up in the economic equivalents of your Appalachian region—in towns and villages where resources were scarce and opportunity was a distant whisper. Their existence, much like the one you described, has been defined by rapid, disruptive economic transition: the dizzying speed of urbanization pulling labor from subsistence farming into grueling factory work.

Their parents and grandparents often lived lives defined by hard manual labor and a relentless struggle for subsistence. They, too, were born into a low-expectations environment where an entrenched form of “cultural fatalism” or inherited resignation could easily take root.

However, their Marine Corps was not a branch of the military; it was the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (Gaokao).

The Gaokao, and the years of brutal, singular academic focus leading up to it, is the ultimate institutional crucible for social mobility in China. It demands the very qualities the Marines instilled in you: self-discipline, rigorous planning, delayed gratification, and absolute commitment. It is the codified path to jump the “fence” of their rural existence, secure a degree from a top university, and thus gain access to the jobs, cities, and opportunities that fundamentally alter their family’s trajectory.

This journey is defined by sheer, unrelenting Chinese rèn jìn—the gritty, tenacious perseverance that pushes one to study under weak light, live frugally, and work high-pressure jobs for years—all fueled by the necessity and profound desire to change the fate of one’s family. These millions of young Chinese people are active, ferocious agents of their own change, embodying upward struggle, just as you did.

Adversaries, Not Kin

This is why, reading your memoir, I felt deep, genuine empathy. But listening to your political rhetoric, particularly your public statements on China that often use language like “peasants” and frame our nation purely as an existential economic threat, the empathy curdles into confusion and disappointment.

This political necessity leads to a profound cognitive dissonance: You critique the “globalist economy” for incurring debt to buy things manufactured by China. But those Chinese manufacturers are often the same rural youth—the hillbillies of China—who left their homes, endured factory conditions, and sent money back to pay for their sibling’s Gaokao tuition. They are not merely an abstract economic force; they are people using their labor to build their own American Dream equivalent.

You champion the idea of self-reliance and the rejection of a victim mentality. Yet, you overlook the world’s most massive and successful demonstration of a population relying on its own effort, diligence, and sacrifice to ascend the social ladder.

Mr. Vance, your story offers a powerful chance for cross-cultural solidarity based on the common human experience of overcoming disadvantage. I sincerely hope that one day, you can separate the legitimate economic grievances of the American worker (which your book articulated so well) from the lived reality of the Chinese people. I hope you can see past the political utility of a simplistic, hostile narrative, and recognize that the resilience you celebrate in yourself and your people is the same indomitable spirit of upward striving that animates millions here.

We are all people who have had to claw our way forward, driven by an unyielding grit and refusal to fail. The true challenge is not to find an enemy across the ocean, but to recognize the shared battle for dignity on both shores and champion a global vision that rewards effort, discipline, and the profound, universal desire to climb.

This first appeared on FPIF.

The post Why Vance’s American Dream Finds Its Mirror in China appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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