IIn November 2016, the Democratic Party was in disarray. Donald Trump had just been declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election, and lawmakers and staffers were panicking about the future of American democracy—and their own jobs. It was a tricky time to plan an event about Hong Kong, a Chinese city that almost no one on Capitol Hill had been thinking about since the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
For a while, it looked as if no one from Congress would show up to meet Joshua Wong, the bespectacled (and now imprisoned) student leader, who was on a plane to Washington for a briefing organized by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), a government agency.
But at the last minute of the event, the Minnesota senator agreed to take part. “He stood at the podium and spoke nonstop for at least six or seven minutes,” recalled Jeffrey Ngo, a US-based Hong Kong activist who helped organize the session. Unlike other senators who typically rely on notes, he “spoke from the heart” about the importance of human rights and democracy in Hong Kong, Ngo said. “I remember thinking he really knew his stuff.”
Tim Walz, who was announced on August 6 as Kamala Harris’ running mate in the November US election, has long ties to China. Republicans have jumped on the opportunity, accusing the Minnesota governor of being pro-Beijing. Post by XArkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said the American people owe Walz an explanation for his “extraordinary” relationship with China.
But Waltz’s supporters, including critics of the Chinese government, have welcomed the sudden rise of a U.S. statesman seen as taking a nuanced, people-centered approach to America’s main geopolitical rival.
Waltz first went to China after college in 1989 to teach English at Foshan No. 1 High School in the southern province of Guangdong. The assignment was nearly halted just before he was scheduled to enter China, when in the early hours of June 4, 1989, People’s Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on peaceful protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians.
But Waltz and his fellow teachers decided to follow through with their plans to teach in China. Waltz later recalled that “a lot of people” were “very upset” about the decision. “But I believed at the time that diplomacy would happen on many levels, especially people-to-people, and the opportunity to attend a high school in China at that critical time seemed really important to me,” Waltz said. said 2014.
During his time in Foshan, Waltz was treated “like royalty,” said a former colleague, a teacher surnamed Pan. Interviewed “We all had a good impression of him… His smile is very contagious,” Pan said, recalling Waltz spending his month’s salary on ice cream in the humid city. Chen Weichuan, a former teacher from Foshan city, said: Explained Waltz was “an easy-going guy” who “laughed all day long.”
After returning to the U.S., Waltz and his wife started a company that sponsored summer trips to China for American students. Gillian Walker, a Minnesota lawyer who went on the 1997 trip, said: said Last week, he said Waltz helped “shape me into a new way of thinking.”
“You can read about China in books, but when you go there, think about how big an impact it has,” Walker said.
Former American students recall Waltz taking them to Tiananmen Square and walking them through the bloody history of repression. In a 2014 testimony, he said the lesson he learned from the massacre was that “when you see these things happening, you can justify and make up all kinds of reasons in your head why someone didn’t stand up, or why something didn’t happen, or why no one remembers.”
Waltz was so keen to preserve the moment that he even got married on the fifth anniversary of the massacre – “we wanted a date that would be remembered forever,” according to his wife.
Waltz’s continued support for human rights in China, including in areas the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers particularly sensitive, contradicts Republican attempts to portray him as pro-Beijing.
In 2009, long before human rights abuses in Xinjiang became mainstream in Washington, Waltz said: There, and in Tibet, a “cultural genocide” is taking place.
In 2016, he met with the Dalai Lama, an experience he described as “life-changing.” That same year, he took a group of students from Minnesota to meet with the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile. Beijing has consistently criticized foreign leaders who meet with Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Waltz “seems to genuinely care about Tibet.” [has] “It is not uncommon to see US and UK politicians who are broadly critical of the Chinese government, but that does not make them pro-Tibet. The greatest supporters of Tibetans are those who try to understand how Tibetans have built democratic institutions in exile and who are knowledgeable enough to point out specific abuses against Tibetans. This is what it means to be a friend of Tibet,” said John Jones of the London-based NGO Free Tibet.
Thirty-five years after Mr. Waltz first set foot in China, relations between Washington and Beijing have remained uneasy, and are at their lowest point as he seeks to become America’s No. 2 leader.
Analysts point out that the role of the vice president is often, but not always, limited. Therefore, it is not yet clear how Waltz’s personal knowledge of China will affect the future of the Harris administration. In his short time on the campaign trail, Waltz has not made any major statements about China. However, as the first presidential candidate to have lived in China since George H.W. Bush, Waltz has been largely welcomed by China experts.
