Tim Walz brings extensive China experience to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign — which his political allies see as an asset, but his opponents see as a liability.
The Minnesota governor’s resume includes a year teaching in China just after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He visited more than 30 times in the years that followed, organizing student trips.
That user did not elaborate. Walz’s U.S. government service includes a 24-year career in the Minnesota Army National Guard, 12 years as a U.S. congressman and five years in his current job as governor of Minnesota.
Keen China watchers say that so far, Beijing has not publicly reacted.
Kaiser Kuo, who hosts the Sinica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, says Walz’s directness may prove to have influence among the Chinese public.
“He’s been very forthright in his criticisms of China’s human rights record, and I think he’s done that from a position that is maybe more credible because of his conspicuous earnestness and his sincerity, and the embodiment of the kind of values that he purports to be wanting to spread to China,” Kuo said.
Kuo noted that in a statement Walz read into the record while serving on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, “He very explicitly said anything the United States does won’t really change what happens on the ground in China — that only the Chinese people can do that. So, I think he’s aware of the limitations of this. But I think like all Americans — I would hope — he is very committed to democracy.”
Other China analysts said that a Harris-Walz administration is expected to largely continue the toughened China policies of the Biden and Trump administrations. Under President Joe Biden, a stream of Cabinet officials visited China, and Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in person in late 2023.
“If he [Walz] should win, and he becomes vice president … I think this should be seen around the world, in China, in Asia, as continuity in the complex decades-long U.S. policy of recognizing the need to deal with China as a major power in the world, not that part of the world – but also the differences in in values, especially when it comes to democratization,” said Jim Fallows, an author and journalist who has written two books on China and was a speechwriter for former President Jimmy Carter.
Fallows, who also lived in China for several years, said Walz’s recollections about living there are largely similar to those of other Americans, “where they recognize the many areas of fellow feeling between Chinese and American people and institutions but also the areas of tension which he’s expressed.”
If elected, Walz will be the highest-level U.S. official to have lived in China since former President George H.W. Bush, who served as a top diplomatic official in the country for a little over a year starting in 1974.
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