Tim Walz could hardly have made it clearer how important China is to him. He planned his wedding for June 4, 1994, exactly five years after the massacre on Tiananmen Square. He chose a day that he would always remember, he later said. He also spent his honeymoon with his wife in China.
The fact that American presidential candidate Kamala Harris has chosen the Democratic governor from Minnesota as her running mate is also an exciting choice from a foreign policy perspective. Walz could revive the somewhat dormant tradition of vice presidents paying close attention to foreign policy.
Since George Bush Sr., who was the American ambassador to Beijing in the 1970s, no president or vice president has had as much direct experience in the People’s Republic as Walz. During the period surrounding the Tiananmen massacre, he went to Guangdong, just outside Hong Kong, as part of a Harvard University volunteer program and taught English at a middle school for a year.
“Nobody is more pro-China than the Marxist Walz”
Back in the United States, he raved about the experience in local newspaper reports. No matter how long he lived, he would never be treated better than he was during that time in China. “If they had the right leadership, there would be no limit to what they could achieve,” he said at the time. The Chinese were “kind, generous and capable.” Walz made an effort to learn Mandarin and Cantonese, traveled to the People’s Republic more than thirty times, and even founded a travel agency with his wife that organized exchanges for American students. According to reports, these were partly funded by the Chinese government.
Cooperation with the Communist Party could become a problem for him in the election campaign. Some people on social media have already speculated that Walz is a secret agent, on whichever side. “Communist China is very happy with Tim Walz as Kamala’s VP choice,” wrote Republican Richard Grenell on the X platform. “Nobody is more pro-China than the Marxist Walz,” wrote the former American ambassador to Germany, who is also being considered as the future Secretary of State should Donald Trump become president again. Walz wants to move even more jobs to China, accused him of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, whose wife also briefly taught in China.
Walz’s experience clearly sets him apart from other American politicians who deal with China relations. Many of them barely know the country. “If someone tells you they are a China expert, they are probably not telling the truth, because China is a complex country,” Walz himself once said.
At the beginning of Trump’s first presidency, Walz was critical of his course and the trade conflict he started with China. The relationship with China does not necessarily have to become confrontational, he said. Since then, however, Washington and Beijing have grown far apart. It is likely that Walz will continue Biden and Harris’ China policy if he becomes vice president. He has taken a tougher tone in economic policy. Last year he told the Japanese newspaper Nikkei: “We welcome Japanese companies investing billions of dollars in Minnesota, but we will not accept Chinese companies.”
The Dalai Lama’s journey
Walz has repeatedly made it clear that he cares about precisely those human rights issues that Beijing reacts angrily to. In his first year in China, he began to focus on Tibet and later traveled there as a politician. He criticized the treatment of Tibetans and met with the Dalai Lama. Walz also met with the now-imprisoned Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong. In the House of Representatives, he was a member of a commission that looked into human rights violations in China. He repeatedly supported resolutions and laws that dealt with the human rights situation in China.
When asked about Walz, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that they do not comment on internal US affairs. Even in the party media, there has been little indication of what Beijing thinks of Walz.
It is clear that with his cultural and language skills it would be much easier for him to win the sympathy of the Chinese population. When American politicians visit local restaurants on trips to China, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did several times, even party media speak of “food diplomacy”. In China’s social media, the politicians hit a nerve. The population dissects the way they hold their chopsticks and the dishes they order.
Since his nomination, Walz has been one of the hot topics on Chinese social media. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the excitement that a Chinese-speaking American vice president could generate. But it could also be all the more disappointing.
