Minnesota’s Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is increasingly under fire from Republicans for connections to the People’s Republic of China and the Communist Party that governs it. Walz’s repeated Chinese visits and his education-sharing activities have drawn criticism from experts and politicians for suggesting deeper connections with China’s Communist Party. Such concerns are being expressed at a moment when the Biden administration’s policies toward China also come under scrutiny, leaving the larger Democratic Party as a whole questionable in relation to the Chinese government.
Walz’s history with China begins in 1989 when he was among the first American teachers to go to the communist country following the Tiananmen Square uprising as part of Harvard’s WorldTeach programme. He taught in China for a year, and it was a transformative experience. After returning to Minnesota, Walz organised yearly student trips to China in the 1990s and 2000s. He even founded a firm dedicated to taking students on study tours to different parts of the world, including China.
However, Walz’s involvement with China has since come under scrutiny. One of the most vocal critics is Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, who recently expressed concerns on Fox Business about Walz’s “continuing relationship with the United Front Work Department,” a Chinese Communist Party organization known for influencing foreign governments. Chang warned that Walz’s long-standing contacts with the party “are very disturbing,” and he raised the possibility that Walz’s educational travel ventures may have been supported, if not funded, by the Communist Party .
“Tim Walz, who’s had this continuing relationship with the United Front Work Department, even as governor of Minnesota… his contact with the party has spanned this century,” Chang stated, suggesting that Walz’s activities might have been greenlit by Chinese officials as part of their broader strategy to influence U.S. politicians.
Then Walz’s office responded to a mounting outcry by clarifying how many visits the governor had made to China, noting that the governor has been there “nearly 15 times,” rather than the higher numbers previously reported. This retraction followed Walz’s correction of an assertion made at the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate, when he appeared to suggest that he was in China during the Tiananmen Square uprisings. His spokesperson later explained that Walz had been in China after the revolution but not during the protests themselves.
The scandal about Walz’s ties to China, too, is subject to investigation by the House Oversight Committee. Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said his committee is investigating Walz’s connections with the Chinese Communist Party and whether these relationships have made him unfit to serve as vice president. Republicans love Walz’s work on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, in which he investigated human rights, and advocated for a more amiable economic relationship between the US and China. Walz made a public appeal to put an end to former President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and demand that the two superpowers collaborate.
Walz’s stance toward China, as the issue grew in attention, has much in common with President Joe Biden’s own China scandal. Biden himself has been repeatedly criticized for family business ventures in China, particularly those of his son, Hunter Biden. Several Republican lawmakers have wondered over and over again if the Biden family’s Chinese donations affected the president’s China policies.
China was a difficult partner for Biden’s administration. Although the president has spoken about staying on his guns on human rights violations in Xinjiang and China’s increasingly aggressive military posture in the South China Sea, opponents have also been quick to point to the administration’s more measured tone on trade and economic matters. Biden’s rolling back some of the Trump-era tariffs and his administration’s hesitation to speak directly to China about some trade practices has made people wonder if the president’s approach to Beijing was motivated by personal financial connections.
Specifically, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Adam Comer, has also been scrutinizing the Biden family’s alleged corporate activities in China. The committee has been alarmed at allegations that millions of dollars are flowing from Chinese companies to members of the Biden family. Comer and other GOP lawmakers have suggested that these financial arrangements can create conflict of interest — especially for Biden’s position on the US-China relationship.
While more details become known about Walz’s and Biden’s relationships with China, observers have started to draw an unbroken correlation between those relationships and the Democratic Party’s general China policy. According to GOP hawks, such relationships could be part of a worrying pattern among Democrats of being too co-operative with China, a world-obsessed country that has become more militarily overt.
Meanwhile, Walz’s China connections are getting more and more under fire as Election Day nears. Left-wing analysts and the media are questioning whether Walz’s long relationship with China has any bearing on his capacity to lead one of the most powerful agencies in the U.S. government.
Walz and the Harris-Walz campaign are still fighting the accusations of Chinese Communist Party ties, and the matter is certain to stay on center stage for the final weeks of the campaign. Not sure these charges will affect voters in a big way, but they’re bound to continue to fuel GOP propaganda going into the 2024 elections.
For more information, visit Politico and Fox Business.
