He’s been called Tiananmen Tim, Wuhan Walz, Totalitarian Tim, The Great Walz of China and much, much worse. Tim Walz, the vice-presidential pick of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has been the talk of the town for several days running, some of it edifying, but much of it insubstantial, if not off the wall.
While Democrats hail the mild-mannered Minnesota governor for bringing balance and ballast to a Harris-Walz ticket, Republicans are raising questions about his China connection. Shortly after graduating college, Walz joined a Harvard-organized program to teach English in China. Assigned to a classroom of 65 students in Foshan in 1989-1990, the future high school teacher was, by available accounts, a very ordinary wide-eyed stranger in a strange land.
He told Americans back home how friendly and generous the ordinary citizens of China were despite the precipitous decline in U.S.-China relations in the aftermath of the June 4, 1989 crackdown in Beijing.
During his year in Guangdong Province, Walz says he would take the inexpensive public bus to visit Macau for the purpose of eating American fast food. He learned a smattering of Cantonese and a few terms in Mandarin, but even this modest accomplishment which was part of a thoroughly unremarkable experience as a young, first-time visitor is being used against him to portray him as an agent of Beijing’s will.
No sooner was Walz mentioned as the Democrat’s VP pick than Trump/Vance supporters unleashed an information-poor, innuendo-rich red scare, a take-no-prisoners approach to weaponize, what by all accounts sounds like a wholesome and edifying first time sojourn in a foreign country for a middle American, into a dark, nefarious tale reeking of dirty intrigue, conspiracy and a communist plot.
To put it in blunt terms, Republicans have become purveyors of xenophobia so extreme that merely visiting a country like China can be seen as constituting betrayal of the USA.
Republican partisans and operatives are taking a kernel of truth, about a young man’s Peace Corps-style experience in a populous land and spinning it into a complex conspiratorial mix of fantasy, bad jokes and outright lies, the punchline of which is to implicate Tim Walz as a “Manchurian Candidate.”
The right wants to suggest that Walz has been brainwashed and programmed to serve his putative masters in Beijing.
The truth of the matter is of minor interest to the mudslingers, who cobble together all sorts of random, insupportable accusations in the hopes that some of it will stick and defile his image. The scramble to demonize Walz by weaponizing his China experience is being cobbled into a spurious narrative intended to sway credulous media consumers in November.
The latest U.S. election cycle is indeed a sorry spectacle to witness, and while it must be noted that the Democratic Party has its share of skilled media manipulators, mudslingers, and also has a penchant for adhering to false and insubstantial narratives, the words coming from the Trump campaign, and the man himself, are at a whole new level of detachment from reality.
The Trump War Room, which boasts 2 million followers on X, has made posts on Walz that veer between dubious innuendo and outright insanity.
Even seemingly neutral statements are presented in such a way as to implicate Walz in a web of right-wing conspiratorial thinking.
- After his first trip to China, Walz “spread Chinese propaganda”
No explanation or evidence given. For true Trump believers an accusation will suffice.
- For his honeymoon Walz went back to China, and took his high school students with him
It’s hard work shepherding dozens of American teenagers on an exchange program to a foreign country, and it says something rather admirable about the man’s work ethic that he was willing to combine his honeymoon with educational outreach, but this is made to sound ominous in the context of the Trump report.
- Walz spent so much time in China that he learned the language!
Have the xenophobic nationalists stooped so low as to believe that learning a foreign language is bad? Is a new age of Know-nothingism upon us? Has Tim Walz become irreversibly tainted by his very modest command of Chinese?
The anti-China card being played by Trump partisans has extensive media reach. It’s easy to dismiss the deranged podcasts of the Trump supporter known as “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell when he accuses Walz of making “horrible decisions with the China virus when that came in” and calls him a “disgusting individual!”
But what about CNN?
CNN points out, with a smirk, and a hint of pride, that its report on Walz was blacked out in China. That’s Beijing. But was it a well-researched report?
In the story “Republicans step up Walz attacks, seize on trips to China” why does CNN show a picture of Liu Xiaobo at Tiananmen Square in 1989 with chyron reading:
“Tim Walz says he was ‘treated like a king?’”
What’s the connection, if any?
Is “Tiananmen Tim” being tainted for his physical presence in China in 1989?
In a country as big as China, is it not possible that one should encounter gracious citizens, even in the aftermath of a far-away traumatic event?
CNN then goes on to quote two Chinese netizens on Weibo, trading in the kind of innuendo that Fox News is so adept at:
- “1989? Great timing!”
- “The years he was in China make him suspicious.”
It’s not enough to criticize China, as Tim Walz, an outspoken proponent of human rights has done on numerous occasions. The U.S. far right, whipping up a wave of knee-jerk nationalist outrage in support of Trump and Vance wants to excoriate China and anyone who lives there and anyone has ever had anything to do with the country.
The American media has lost its moral compass.
The way Tim Walz is being painted “red” is as unfair as it is untrue, but the broad brush strokes are informative in as much as they reveal the hidden prejudices of his detractors.
The vilification process is full bore right now and bound to get worse as Election Day approaches. Even relatively respectable voices on the anti-China right such as self-funded pundit Michael Pilsbury, evokes the worst of Trump, echoing the accusation that Walz is the Manchurian candidate. Pillsbury joins professional China critic Gordon Chang in a program where Fox News host Laura Ingraham sets the tone by saying Walz is “sucking up to China.”
Pillsbury calls Walz an “ideological convert” with a “romantic attachment to China” further suggesting that the depth of his “attachment to China” should be probed.
Gordan Chang makes the useful distinction of saying he’s not anti-China in general, just on a jeremiad against the government, but he damns with faint criticism, suggesting that Walz “is at best naïve.”
Meanwhile Trump, to date, has said little about Walz, other than describing him as “the gentleman from Minnesota,” which appears to be either a cover for a lapse in memory or the use of an uncharacteristically polite turn of phrase. Nonetheless, this feeds into the overall red scare scenario by describing the Harris-Walz ticket as the “most radical left duo in American History.”
The Daily Mail in the UK has been quick on the case. A story featuring a frivolous photo of a youngish Walz wearing a shirt that says “Up the Ying Yang” nonetheless sets an ominous tone inviting readers to connect the dots between known facts.
One of the subtle accusations purveyed in the profile is that Walz oversaw a “scholarship program funded by Beijing.”
Beijing? Just that single word, the name of a city, is used to raise doubts.
Another subtle swipe takes the well-documented hospitality of ordinary Chinese giving thanks to an American volunteer at a time when China was troubled and still a relatively poor place by making it sound like payola. Not only did they treat him like a king, he said, but “they gave me more gifts than I could bring home”
It’s worth pointing out that for all the froth and fluff and empty innuendo swirling about Walz in the Anglosphere media, there has been scarce coverage of Walz in China’s state-run press.
Walz has yet to get a mention on the CCTV evening news, and even the voluminously comprehensive Xinhua cites his name only a few times. One news item mentions his selection as VP pick, and a short follow-up profile describes the political career of Walz in the U.S. with no mention of his visits to China.
While all sorts of things can, and will, be read into Beijing’s reticence to plunge into the inside baseball of American politics, it is worth noting that China’s state-run press tends to observe a media etiquette that avoids outright mockery of foreign leaders and contenders for power, regardless of who they might favor.
As the straightforward China Daily headline of August 7, 2024 suggests—“Presidential election internal affair of U.S.”—spokespersons for China are probably more comfortable in a media environment where criticism is kept at home.
What neither side is saying may be the best news of all.
Tim Walz knows China first-hand which lends weight to his criticism and praise. Unlike his competitors and detractors, Tim Walz is not shooting from the hip or haughtily dismissing China with a single broad brush. Rather he has shown himself willing and able to take a nuanced view of things. What he has to say may be displeasing at times, for it is designed not to curry favor with one side or the other, but reflects hard-won observation and original thought born of humility, respect and a willingness to listen.
