The Vice Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris's History With China Could Be Uncomfortable

Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, has decades-old ties to China that may influence Kamala Harris's strategy towards the second-largest economy in the world, but they might also cause problems for Republicans in her home state and for Beijing's authorities.
The obscure governor of Minnesota taught English in the southern Guangdong region of China in 1989 and 1990. He was the first presidential candidate to live and work in China since George H. W. Bush, the US ambassador in Beijing during the 1970s. Walz has frequently expressed his fondness for the people of China.
"There are no limits on what they could accomplish if they had the proper leadership," he said in a 1990 interview with a local newspaper following his return from China. "They are really thoughtful generous, capable people."

Walz married on the fifth anniversary of the military crackdown in 1989 that killed many people in Tiananmen Square. According to his wife Gwen, "he wanted to have a date he'll always remember," Walz told a local newspaper. Additionally, he has spoken on social media about his "life-changing" lunch with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Walz's involvement in the nation's policy-making is seen in the multiple bills he has sponsored in the US House, among them the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2017. 

Additionally, Walz cosponsored a number of resolutions that expressed concern about the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners and denounced China's suppression of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. 

Following Walz's debut on the national political stage on Tuesday, a number of people took to social media to go through her extensive backlog of remarks on China, some of which date back decades. 

Walz stated, "I don't fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship," in a 2016 video interview that was primarily about agriculture and was now being shared on X. "I strongly disagree with what they're doing in the South China Sea, and I believe that we should not back down." However, there are lots of areas where we can collaborate."

Simultaneously, his opinions toward China have followed a well-known trajectory, moving from optimism that increased economic liberalization would result in increased political liberties to annoyance over what he perceives as China's deteriorating human-rights record. His views seem to be mostly in line with the Biden administration's strategy toward China, which seeks to compete with Beijing in the military and economic domains and, when feasible, work together on issues like climate change and drug trafficking. 

In a 2016 congressional hearing, Walz stated, "I think the idea was, with a free market economy, we'd see a more opening of the Chinese grip on - on social life and on human rights." "That simply has not occurred."