Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is drawing attention from U.S. Republicans – and within China – for his long history with a country seen as Washington’s greatest economic and military rival.
Attacks from supporters of the Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, started after Harris announced on Tuesday that Walz – who taught in China after college and has traveled there many times since – was her vice presidential pick.
“Communist China is very happy with @GovTimWalz as Kamala’s VP pick,” Richard Grenell, who served as ambassador to Germany and acting national intelligence director in the Trump administration, said on X.
The Harris-Walz campaign dismissed such criticism, noting Walz’s record of criticizing Beijing’s human rights record. “Republicans are twisting basic facts,” James Singer, a campaign spokesperson, said. Singer said Walz had long stood up to the Chinese Communist Party and “fought for human rights and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first.”
Walz went to China to teach English and U.S. history in 1989, the year of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, when he was a new college graduate. He and his wife later started a company that organized trips to China for U.S. students. He has been to China more than 30 times.
He speaks some Chinese, got married on June 4 – saying it was a date he would not forget because it is the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary – and honeymooned in China.
Unlike in the 1980s and 90s, when Walz began his travels, the desire for a hard line on China is one of the few truly bipartisan sentiments in U.S. politics at a time of deep divides between Democrats and Republicans.
While Walz has said the U.S.-China relationship doesn’t need to be adversarial, he worked on bills critical of Beijing’s human rights record during his 12 years in the House of Representatives and was a member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which focuses on human rights.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/walzs-long-history-with-china-draws-attacks-praise-2024-08-07/