US & China: The Tim Walz Effect

Within hours of Kamala Harris announcing that Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota would be her running mate, media, China watchers, Republicans and Donald Trump's MAGA supporters were quick to pick up on Tim Walz’s China connections.  

Walz lived in China after graduating from Chadron State College in 1989. He taught English, as well as American culture, to high school students through the WorldTeach programme at Foshan No. 1 High School, described by ChinaTalk’s Lily Ottinger as an “elite Guangdong school with a hundred-year history and track record of sending students to top universities.”

His move came shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre, known in Chinese as ‘June 4th’, and Walz has been vocal about his decision to go, even as many of his American peers were opting to return to the United States.

“I felt it was more important than ever to go and make sure that story was told, and to let Chinese people know we were standing there, we were with them,” Walz can be seen saying in this Voice of America clip.  

And Walz’s time in China clearly left a deep impression on him – he and his wife married on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown and spent their honeymoon taking two delegations of high school students on study tours of China.

“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” Walz's wife was quoted at the time in what appears to be a local US paper, a clipping on which is now making the rounds on X.

According to Newsweek, until 2003 Walz and his wife, also a teacher, ran a company that facilitated study tours of China. 

In the years since, Walz has spoken publicly and positively of his time in China. “No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” he’s told Nebraska’s Star-Herald upon his initial return from Guangdong.   

But he has also been a very public critic of China’s human rights record and a vocal supporter of Chinese human rights activists, such as self-taught lawyer Chen Guangcheng, Sichuanese activists Tan Zuoren and Huang Qi, and Hong Kong democracy activist Jushua Wong.

According to ChinaTalk, he’s co-sponsored a “slew of resolutions” on China’s human rights record, including 2017’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a resolution supporting the release of democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, and a resolution recognising the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.

He’s also made multiple visits to Tibet, met with the Dalai Lama, and has called for the preservation of traditional Tibetan culture and increased religious freedom.   

While his positions on human rights issues are clear, less is known on his China foreign policy stance. Walz, who served for many years in the military, has previously opposed reducing US military funding, and pointed to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea and the military’s deterrent potential as reasons for opposing the cuts.  

In a resurfaced clip that has since made the rounds among Trump supporters on X, Walz emphasises that while he is not a China expert, he disagrees with the view that the US and China need to have a ‘adversarial relationship’.  In 2019, he called on Trump to end the trade war with China.  

The right reacts  

Despite Walz’s long history of calling out China’s human rights record and what is perhaps best described as an attempt to foster genuine understanding between the two powers, Trump supporters and right-wing US media outlets have been quick to weaponise Walz’s China connections. 

Senator Marco Rubio accused Walz of being “groomed” by China, while Richard Grenell, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, tweeted that Walz is “the pick of Communist China” and described him as a China loving “radical”.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton, in a post on X that that has since been re-tweeted over five thousand times, stated that Walz “owes the American people an explanation” about his “unusual” relationship with China. Fox News similarly ran an interview where Walz is labelled the ‘Manchurian Candidate’, a reference to a novel and 1962 film where the son of a US political family is brainwashed by Chinese and Soviet Communists after being captured during the Korean War, in an elaborate plot to manipulate US politics..  

While NBC News, known as a more progressive outlet ran the far more positive, ‘Walz brings extensive China experience to Democratic ticket’ headline, it rightly observes that Walz’s China history also presents a potential challenge when both Democrats and Republicans have competed in the last two elections to be the toughest on China.    

While the Biden-Harris administration has toned down much of Trump’s trade war rhetoric, it has maintained a hardline on trade issues. US-China tensions reached new heights when senior Democrat and then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi decided to make an official visit to Taiwan in 2022.

While Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Xi Jinping in Beijing in the following year, the visit was postponed and marred by the supposed “spy balloon” incident.  

Will Walz influence the US’s China stance? 

So, will having someone with a more China experience and a willingness to engage lead to a shift in the US’s China policy or even the diversity of the China debate this election?  

Observers are leaning towards ‘no’.  

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Diao Daming, a professor at Beijing’s Renmin University focusing on US politics, pointed out, “Having such China experience does not mean he is necessarily going to be positive or negative towards China.”  

Lu Xiang, a US-China specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Science similarly told the paper, “I don’t think their China policy depends on their past experiences, I think it still depends on the American perception of their own economic status.”

This logic holds true for China’s stance on the US: the US-China relationship has deteriorated despite Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s personal ties to rural Iowa, forged during his own visit in the mid-1980s.  

Observers have also pointed out that even though Walz may hold his own more nuanced views on US-China relations, the current US climate means Walz is unlikely to depart from the positions set out by Trump and largely continued by Biden and Harris.

Indeed, the fact that Walz’s China connections have been so quickly simplified and weaponised by Trump supporters may even create incentives for Walz to make a point of appearing “tough on China”.

This would be a sad development when the space for acknowledging complexities or promoting genuine understanding between China and the US is increasingly narrow, reductionist and securitised.  

The selection of Walz may be a win for Chinese Americans, who have been collateral damage in the US-China fallout, though. Walz has a record of getting behind resolutions supporting the Chinese diaspora, including a resolution to for a postage stamp dedicated to Chinese railroad workers, measures to ease restrictions on certain migrants from mainland China, and a bill that would see Chinese American Second World War veterans awarded Congressional Gold Medals.

Whether the selection of Walz will prove beneficial to Chinese Americans is already the topic of debate in community forums.

As one such post observes (in Chinese), “How Walz responds to China is neither here nor there, what’s key is how he treats Chinese Americans... At least he looks like a normal person, not crazy or deranged.” 

++ Opinions expressed are those of the author ++

Asia Media Centre