Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s newly announced running mate, has had an unusually long and involved relationship with China, one that Republicans have seized upon as a line of attack in the face of rising antipathy among voters toward China.<\/p>\n
Both Republican and Democratic leaders have promised to further toughen the country\u2019s stance on Beijing if elected, especially when it comes to trade, but growing bipartisan concern about China\u2019s rise has fueled anti-China sentiment across large swaths of American society, polls show.<\/p>\n
Walz\u2019s selection Tuesday has brought new attention to candidates\u2019 approach to China.<\/p>\n
Republicans have tried to suggest that Walz, who moved to China in 1989 to teach for a year, would be soft on Beijing. Richard Grenell, who served as an ambassador in the Trump administration, on Tuesday called Walz \u201cpro-China,\u201d adding that \u201cCommunist China is very happy\u201d with his candidacy.<\/p>\n
But Walz, 60, has spent much of his political career critical of the Chinese government\u2019s actions, particularly on human rights and democracy.<\/p>\n
Walz first encountered China when he went on a Harvard-run teach abroad program in 1989 and spent a year teaching English and American history at Foshan No. 1 High School in the southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong. \u201cChina was coming, and that\u2019s the reason that I went,\u201d Walz told the Hill in 2007.<\/p>\n
It was a very different time in China. \u201cI was treated exceptionally well,\u201d Walz told Nebraska\u2019s Star-Herald upon his return in 1990. \u201cThere was no anti-American feeling whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there were also concerning events. On June 4, 1989, joyful pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing\u2019s Tiananmen Square turned deadly when Chinese authorities violently crushed the protests.<\/p>\n
When Walz married fellow teacher Gwen Whipple five years later, they got married on June 4. \u201cHe wanted to have a date he\u2019ll always remember,\u201d his wife told a Nebraska newspaper at the time. They went to China on their honeymoon.<\/p>\n
After returning to the United States, where he worked as a public high school teacher, the Walzes set up a company, Educational Travel Adventures, that coordinated summer trips to China almost every year through 2003. As of 2016, according to Walz, he had visited China about 30 times.<\/p>\n
Elected to the House of Representatives in 2006, Walz, who has a master\u2019s degree in genocide studies, championed multiple bills that censured China\u2019s human rights record and served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which focuses exclusively on human rights.<\/p>\n
In 2009, he co-sponsored a resolution condemning the arrest of Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was arrested for subverting state power. And in 2016, he met Tibet\u2019s exiled leader the Dalai Lama, who China considers a separatist. More recently, as governor, he has criticized China for \u201csiding\u201d with Russia on the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
#tbt to 2 years ago, a life-changing lunch with @DalaiLama. We talked about humility, patience, and compassion. I try to embody these values every day in my work. pic.twitter.com\/UnaEyy0GOI<\/p>\n
\u2014 Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) March 15, 2018<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
On China, Walz \u201chas a much longer history than most people in Washington,\u201d said Jeffrey Ngo, a pro-democracy activist from Hong Kong now based in Washington.<\/p>\n
While many lawmakers from both parties have in recent years positioned themselves as critical of China, Ngo said few have centered their arguments on human rights and democracy, emphasizing instead the threat that China poses in trade, geopolitics and security. \u201cWith Governor Walz, it has always been about human rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chinese analysts on Wednesday were ambivalent about Walz and whether, if elected, he would help stabilize U.S.-China relations.<\/p>\n
Walz seems like a \u201csenior American politician\u201d and his time in China could help the Democratic ticket \u201cmake more pragmatic China-related policies instead of relying on ideology, stereotypical views and pure ignorance,\u201d said Tang Xiaoyang, chair of the department of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.<\/p>\n
But Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based scholar of international relations, said Walz\u2019s keen understanding of China may \u201cmake him more difficult for the Chinese government to deal with,\u201d in particular citing Walz\u2019s criticism of China\u2019s handling of the democracy movement in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Chinese state-run media on Wednesday noted Walz\u2019s connections to China but did not mention his advocacy on human rights issues.<\/p>\n
On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, some users saw his time in China as indication he might be friendlier toward the country. \u201cWithout Walz and his connection with China, Harris might take a tougher stance against China,\u201d posted Qiu Zhenhai, founder of a Hong Kong-based think tank.<\/p>\n
But Zha Daojiong, a professor at the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development at Peking University, said he disagreed. Policy regarding China \u201chas a ready and rich template among the two political parties in America\u201d that is not easily influenced by a single political figure, said Zha.<\/p>\n
Would Walz\u2019s history of criticizing China\u2019s human rights record sour relations further between the two countries? Also unlikely, said Zha. Walz is \u201cnot the only prominent American to have such a background,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Zhu Feng, director of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University, said he believes Walz could have a \u201cmore constructive\u201d view on China than other American politicians but that his influence on his party\u2019s \u2014 and his country\u2019s \u2014 overall positioning vis-\u00e0-vis China seems limited. \u201cThe Republican Party has already used Walz\u2019s connection to China to attack him, which could even force Walz to take a tougher stance on China,\u201d Zhu said.<\/p>\n
Ngo, the Hong Kong activist, said he didn\u2019t think it was likely Walz would stray from what have been his central concerns in China over the last three decades.<\/p>\n
In 2016, a group of pro-democracy Hong Kong activists that included Ngo visited Washington to lobby their cause with U.S. officials. This was during the lame duck period after Trump had been elected and no lawmakers accepted the activists\u2019 invitation to speak at an event on Hong Kong \u2014 save one: Walz.<\/p>\n
The following year, Walz was one of two lawmakers in the House to sponsor the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which eventually passed in 2019. \u201cThe fact that he supported it when very few people did and that his support was sustained \u2014 that\u2019s different and that\u2019s who he is,\u201d Ngo said. \u201cMy hope is that the Democratic Party leans into it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Pei-lin Wu contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s newly announced running mate, has had an unusually long and involved relationship with China, one that Republicans have seized upon as a line of attack in the face of rising antipathy among voters toward China. Both Republican and Democratic leaders have promised to further toughen the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}