Former US President Donald Trump won the presidential election partly due to the support of millennials and Rust Belt voters, boosted by Trump’s running mate JD Vance, an up-and-coming US political star.

So what motivates Vance? His best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, offers insight. The autobiographical book captures Vance’s journey from a small town in the Rust Belt to Yale Law School. Marked by four main themes, Hillbilly Elegy provides a window into Vance’s beliefs and values ​​and sheds light on the stories behind the 2024 US presidential election.

The book Hillbilly Elegy emphasizes character. Vance admires the integrity of his community — their acts of kindness, including helping strangers dig cars out of the snow and greeting everyone warmly, their respect for traditions such as observing funeral processions, their deep connection to roots — as seen in his, feeling uncomfortable. revealing his prestigious background at the school even as a student – and their sense of gratitude, such as Vance’s appreciation for his mentor, Amy Chua, who advised him to apply for an editor’s position in his search for a judgeship and prioritize the relationship with his girlfriend about a distant job opportunity. He says this was the best advice he ever received in his life.

Vance’s emphasis on character is based on a simple but powerful principle: the goodwill of people to one another, as exemplified in the spirit of the Flying Tigers, which remains a testament to the enduring friendship and mutual support between China and the US. Vance says in his book that his great-grandfather served in World War II, fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.

The vice president-elect’s memoir emphasizes the importance of resilience, telling the story of two generations on the move: His grandparents left the small town of Jackson in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky in the late 1940s for Middletown, a steel town in Ohio, where they left. built a middle-class life during the manufacturing boom. Decades later, Vance himself moved from Middletown to New Haven, San Francisco, then Washington, DC and other cities. He is not shy about sharing his difficult childhood: his parents divorced early and he was raised by his mother, a nurse with a long history of drug abuse and a chaotic life.

Studies and personal accounts suggest that children in an environment like Vance’s often give up on themselves. However, his grandparents, especially his strong-willed, cigarette-smoking, gun-toting grandmother, provided him with a rare sense of security to overcome his painful childhood experiences.

During his formative high school years, Vance put his faith in the mantra “hard work pays off” by working at a grocery store, working at a tile company the summer before enrolling at Yale, and shining in the degree from the university with the help of mentors like Chua and his girlfriend and spiritual guide, Usha. These experiences laid the foundation for his ability to face the challenges he faced later in life.

In addition, Vance said it’s important for the U.S. to properly manage the drug crisis at home. Synthetic opioids are the leading cause of drug-related deaths among people aged 18 to 49 in the US. And Vance says in the book that his grandmother once questioned the priorities of a society that “could afford aircraft carriers but not drug treatment facilities” for people like his mother. This raises a larger question: Why is the US wasting taxpayer dollars on freedom of navigation operations in the Asia-Pacific instead of spending on drug treatment and rehabilitation at home?

As a country that has effectively combated drug trafficking and abuse, China provides a model of successful counter-narcotics. Pooling resources to address the U.S. opioid crisis could be a common goal, especially given the common challenges both countries face.

Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard, said Sino-US relations should go beyond zero-sum, “either-or” games. With pressing global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence regulation and drug control, only by working together can the two countries build a safer and more prosperous world. Even history tells us that cooperation benefits all, while conflict harms all.

The book Hillbilly Elegy also talks about responsibility. Vance criticized the culture in which individuals increasingly blame society or government for personal failures. He shares two stories: that of a friend who quit his job because he hated getting up early in the morning and blamed his failure on the “Obama economy”; and a co-worker who took long bathroom breaks during work hours. So blaming US job losses on “Obama closing the coal mines” or “Chinese getting all the jobs” is ludicrous.

Following Vance’s logic, is blaming China for all US woes an effort to create a false sense of crisis? If the real goal is to push the US and China into the “Thucydides Trap”, the American people should ask themselves if both countries falling into the trap is in their best interest. And people in general should remember that blaming other countries or external forces for domestic problems rarely addresses any of the problems.

The author is an associate professor at the Party School of the Hainan Committee of the Communist Party of China. The views do not necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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