Tim Walz has rare knowledge of China
If Tim Walz becomes Vice President of the United States during the election in November, he will bring more knowledge of China than any previous American leader since the PRC was founded in 1949.
From the summer of 1989, he taught American history, culture and English for a year to students at the elite Foshan Number 1 High School in Guangdong. “China was coming, and that’s the reason I went,” he explained in a later interview.
On June 4, 1994, in western Nebraska, he married fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, and the two took 60 students on a field trip to China. It became their honeymoon. In total, he has visited the country 30 times, including school exchange trips and visits as a member of Congress, after he entered in 2007.
In Foshan, he taught four classes a day with about 65 students in each class. As one of the first American professors there, he was given a monthly salary of US$80 – double that of a local teacher – and the luxury of an air conditioner for the searing heat of the summer.
He loved the students and they loved him. “No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again,” he said in 1990. The students called him “Fields of China” because he was so kind to them. For Christmas, they cut down a pine tree, decorated it and brought it to his room.
In 1990, he visited Tibet and spent several days living with monks.
After his return to Nebraska in 1990, he told the local newspaper: “going to China was one of the best things I have ever done. The Chinese people have been mistreated and cheated by their government for years. If they had proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, capable people.”
It was to show the Chinese to his students in a small, Mid-West town that he organized field trips for them to China during the 1990s and until 2003. They met Tai Qi masters, practiced the use of chopsticks and calligraphy and did sight-seeing.
In 1993, he took them to his school in Foshan, where a former student was guide for the visitors. One of his American students, Kyle Lierk, said that, when they left, he wept. “Tim was able to build the trip around humanity,” he said.
The trips included visits to Beijing and Tiananmen Square, where Walz explained the events of June 4 and the brutal rule of Chairman Mao.
After he entered the U.S. Congress in 2007, his interest in China continued. He engaged with activists from China and Hong Kong and co-sponsored resolutions on human rights, including demanding the release of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and Huang Qi. He co-signed the Hong Kong Rights and Democracy Act in 2017.
In 2016, he opposed Beijing’s military expansion in the South China Sea and said it was a reason for the U.S. not to reduce military spending.
In 2015, he took part in a rare American delegation to Tibet led by Nancy Pelosi, then House Minority leader. The next year he met the Dalai Lama; he later described the meeting as “life-changing”. There is a famous photograph of the meeting, with Walz wearing a white scarf of welcome around his neck.
In 2016, Walz said that it was important to have “constructive dialogue with Beijing to ensure the preservation of traditional Tibetan culture and Tibet’s fragile ecology … We must maintain co-operation with China. We need to stand firm on what they are doing in the South China Sea, but there are many areas of co-operation that we can work on.”
The consensus among the Washington elite and China scholars is that, as Vice-President, Walz would be a great asset to policy making in China and East Asia. Kamala Harris has never visited China.
The current policy, shared by both parties, is strongly anti-China, in diplomacy, trade, economics and the military. The U.S. is working very hard to prevent China overtaking it in high-technology sectors. The atmosphere resembles to some extent the anti-Soviet era of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. It has persuaded many Chinese scientists and scholars working in the U.S. to return home, for fear of being targeted.
Walz is able to regard China with more detail and more nuance, to separate the people from the government and to add humanity to policy.
His accession to power would surely benefit both countries.
Mark O'Neill
A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.
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