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Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, taught in China and visited the country about 30 times. But he criticized the Chinese government’s human rights record.
By Amy Qin and Keith Bradsher
Amy Qin reported from Washington and Keith Bradsher from Foshan, China.
In the summer of 1989, Tim Walz faced a difficult decision.
Fresh out of school in the small Nebraska town, he had just turned down a solid assignment that was offered to him from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. and moved around the world to teach at one of the best local schools in China. He had arrived in Hong Kong, just across the Chinese border, when People’s Liberation Army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to quell pro-democracy protests.
Rumors circulated about a possible civil war in China. Many foreigners, including most American professors, fled the country. Should he return home or continue his adventure in China?
He to enter.
“At the time, I thought international relations was going to take a stand on many levels, including user-to-user,” Walz recalled in 2014, at a congressional hearing marking the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. in a top-level Chinese school at this critical moment seemed very vital to me. ”
The year Walz spent training English in southern China marked the beginning of what would become a decades-long relationship with that country. As top-notch schoolteachers in Nebraska and Minnesota, Mr. Walz and his spouse, Gwen, led trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce scholars to Chinese history and culture. Walz said he had visited China about 30 times, adding that it was for his honeymoon.
This deep history of engagement with China reflects a lesser-known foreign dimension to the Democratic vice presidential candidate. If he were elected vice president, Walz would bring to the White House an unusually extensive private experience in China, a story his supporters say. It may simply be an advantage at a time of volatile relations between Washington and Beijing.
But so far the crusade has made little mention of Mr. Walz there, even though it relied on depictions of the Minnesota governor as a fatherly Midwestern father, coach and teacher. He would deal with China, which the Biden and Trump administrations have treated harshly.
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