On the eve of his debate with JD Vance, Tim Walz is now hilariously trying to walk back his well-documented and extensive love of Communist China, but only a little bit.

Super convincing. https://t.co/UdQL2BIGEx pic.twitter.com/gaVgfp0ogF

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) September 30, 2024

But what is really troubling about Tim Walz's China trips and his business with China is how closely tied he is to the Chinese Communist Party. All the evidence that Walz is improperly tied to China is circumstantial, but that circumstantial evidence is problematic. I doubt Walz is a spy for China--at least the evidence is thin if not nonexistent--he clearly has a friendlier and longer relationship with the Chinese Communist Party than one would expect from a National Guardsman and teacher. 

Apparently his ties have even alarmed FBI agents, if a whistleblower report is any indication. 

🚩 Tim Walz’s Troubling Ties to China
• Lived, visited 30 times, and held senior-ranking security clearance in China
• Founded a company for US student travel to China
• Married June 4, anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre
• Honeymoon in Chinapic.twitter.com/j528ZnsIKn

— Jane Adams (@iLoveJaneAdams) September 30, 2024

In the midst of a campaign, it is hard to sort out the hyperbole and accusations from the legitimate facts and concerns, and as far as I know, nobody has done a deep enough dive into the issue of Walz's ties to China because, as an obscure Congressman and then Governor it didn't seem pressing. Until such a deep dive is done, all we have is circumstantial evidence that something troubling is going on. 

I'm not going to go through all that evidence because Minnesota Public Radio produced a recent profile on the issue- a very friendly profile that puts him in as good a light as possible- and there is enough in that one piece to raise eyebrows. 

Walz, first of all, has repeatedly said that he doesn't view China as an adversary but as a partner. This makes him an outlier, not just regarding how American foreign policy elites see the issue, but also placing him at odds with what the Chinese Communist Party itself has said time and again. Is China a friend to America, or just to Tim Walz?

Homeland Security staffers raised ‘serious concerns’ about Tim Walz’s China ties, whistleblower says — and now the House is investigating

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security on Monday following whistleblower allegations about an internal… pic.twitter.com/kPvOA69tKh

— Rob (@_ROB_29) September 30, 2024

MPR notes that China has played an outsized role in Walz's life--he got married on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre because he wanted his anniversary to be a date he remembered, and he honeymooned in China. He lived there for a year, started a nonprofit funded by the Chinese Communist Party to take kids to China, and championed Chinese causes here in the United States. Whether he visited China 30 times, as he originally said, or merely 15, his ties are deep and long-lived. 

Yet he avoided the issue during the campaign, and the Harris/Walz website doesn't mention this.

But, now as Minnesota’s governor and the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president, Walz has chosen to emphasize his folksy image as a down-home Midwestern dad and state-championship football coach rather than his history as a peripatetic world traveler. His biography on the Harris-Walz campaign’s official website makes no mention of his extensive international experience. 

As vice president, he would have a far bigger foreign policy role than he does now. Since Walz joined the national ticket, APM Reports has interviewed more than a dozen people and combed through business records, government documents, yearbooks and old news clippings in search of a better picture of his experience in China. The reporting — which includes exclusive video obtained by APM Reports of his time in China — paints a picture of a distinctive and often-overlooked part of Walz’s life. 

That should raise some eyebrows. After all, for years he arranged student trips to China after living there himself, yet he has buried the issue now that he is running for Vice President. 

Minnesota Public Radio portrays concerns about Walz's ties to China as right-wing conspiracy-mongering, but its own story shows that Walz managed to get perks and permissions that were quite unusual. MPR portrays this as an example of his unique diplomatic skills. Others might suggest this raises the question of a quid pro quo. 

During his year there, Walz has said he made frequent trips to Macau, which was still a Portuguese province and became a semi-autonomous part of China, similar to Hong Kong, in 1999. He also traveled thousands of miles to Tiananmen Square and Tibet, which was restricted at that time.

“I'm really quite impressed that he was able to pull that off in 1989 or 1990,” said Evan Dawley, a former China-based field director for WorldTeach. (WorldTeach is now defunct, and its archives at Harvard won’t be open to researchers and journalists until 2039, under a university policy that seals administrative records for at least 50 years.)

Remember, this was just after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, yet Walz got permission to travel everywhere, including the heart of the movement against the Chinese Regime. I, too, would be impressed, or at least that fact would make an impression on me. 

In 1993, Walz arranged what would be the first in a series of summer trips to China for his students.

“Mr. Walz made all the reservations by phone — in Chinese!” Alliance High School student Anne Hjersman wrote in a letter to the editor published in the local paper. Students and teachers who knew him recalled that he spoke at least proficient Mandarin, though he told a reporter in 1990 after he returned from Foshan (where the locals speak Cantonese) that he had “great difficulty” with Mandarin pronunciation. A Chinese New Year greeting he recorded as governor in 2021 includes brief messages in both Mandarin and Cantonese.

The trips would not have been possible without Walz’s connections in China. The Guangzhou University’s Physical Education Institute covered in-country costs for at least one of the early trips, a local newspaper reported in 1993. Students needed to come up with just $1,600 apiece to cover everything else on the first two-week trip. Students further defrayed costs by selling coupons for ice cream bars door to door — six bars for $2.

Again, Walz's ties to China are portrayed positively--but then again, close ties with the Chinese Communist Party look different in light of his potential role as VP. What might be good for a High School teacher might not seem so benign for a VP, especially since the CCP funneled money into his program. 

“I can't fathom how they got all that put together,” said Almond, who attended as a chaperone. “I don't know if we could do that at the scale now that we did back then.”

It seems Walz certainly had some magic pull. 

Walz's admirers claim that any concerns about Tim Walz's close connection to the Chinese Communist Party are simply examples of unfair Sinophobia. But, given the fact that a war over Taiwan could be looming during the next presidential term, perhaps a bit of phobia is in order. 

The Harris campaign seems to think so. They have done what they can to hide Walz's connection to China, and have been hiding the candidate as much as possible. 

Tim Walz, who became Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick partially on the strength of a viral, unscripted cable-news appearance in which he called Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird,” is a surprisingly bubble-wrapped campaigner. https://t.co/2iRUPOu1Lk

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 1, 2024

I wonder why.