Already a member of the Army National Guard, Walz sought and was one of the first-ever to receive a year-long WorldTeach job in China in 1989. He felt that “China was coming.” Somehow, the Army National Guard permitted this extended trip to a non-allied country during Walz’ contract, and did not recall him even after the Tiananmen Square massacre in the months leading to Desert Shield.
Walz was bought off with trinkets. He noted of his initial time in China as a school teacher that “they gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience,” blithely unaware that he was in the process of being groomed and won over. “No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” Walz noted eerily about the overseas stint during a time of historic unrest.
Walz selects tasteful attire for chaperoning school children.
In a critique of the CCP, Walz said at the conclusion of the teaching gig of China that “if they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish.” A fine hypothesis in 1990, but the fundamental leadership under the CCP has not changed. Accordingly, nothing else about China’s circumstances has meaningfully changed. Yet Walz pressed ahead in doing business with the same adversarial communist government of China.
He soon formed a business in 1994 accompanying school children to see the China of poor “leadership.” The CCP, evidently overlooking Walz’s disapproval, welcomed his business “with a special invitation from the Chinese government.” Remarkably, Walz was able to create this politically fraught venture at the age of 30, with no prior business experience in China, or in general. That the Chinese government “paid a large part of the cost” of these trips suggests strong endorsement and control of the activities.
Walz revealed logical contradictions in explaining his intentions for these student trips. He told the Nebraska Star-Herald in 1993 that he wanted the Chinese people oppressed under communism to “see what’s on the outside” by meeting his American students. But he also advised his students before embarking to “downplay their American-ness" to “avoid stereotypes the Chinese have that every American is rich.” Apparently to Walz, to be American is to be “rich,” and that is a bad thing – even if the goal is for Chinese to witness what America’s about.
One of the trips escorting students doubled as his honeymoon. Fitting; he chose the 5th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre for his wedding day as “he wanted to have a date he’ll always remember.” Gwen Whipple was either a very understanding bride-to-be, or into it. Walz would go on to co-sponsor Congressional resolutions condemning China’s censorship of events related to Tiananmen Square. Evidently a bloody mass murder event was great enough for his wedding date but terrible enough to censure in contradiction of a big portion of his professional past.
Also: since the CCP has had a long record of censoring any reference to the Tiananmen Square event including imprisoning violators, why would it sponsor and endorse a business led by a man who publicly memorialized the event with his own wedding? This dispensation for Walz can only be explained by special status, dismissal in the court of public opinion as an un-serious person, or both.
Walz is proud of his China ties, citing his experience as credentials for dealing with the CCP. In an extended video shared by Michael Sobolik on X, Walz says of the CCP that “if we’re on the same sheet of music, two of the world’s great super-powers... there’s many collaborative things we can do together.” Walz uses CCP-friendly rhetoric by lumping the US and China together as “two great super-powers.” As well, Walz in this remark has abandoned his rejection of the CCP 35 years ago, and feels that it is possible to be on the “same sheet of music” with the same CCP now.
On an archived page from Walz’ Congressional website from the period of 2007-2019, he noted that he has “many concerns about China's poor human rights record. China’s brutal suppression of pro-democracy advocates, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and other critics of the ruling Communist Party is an affront to basic human decency. Additionally, I strongly believe in the need to establish rule of law, freeing the Chinese people from facing imprisonment based on the whims of party leaders.” This is the place Walz saw fit to bring school girls from 1994 to 2003, allowing them to independently “see what they want to see, do what they want to do and get there on their own bicycles”?
As Minnesota Governor since 2019, Walz lately finds himself begging for Chinese investment. He noted in the same year that his state’s “farmers remain in desperate need of a U.S. trade deal with China,” upon returning empty-handed from a trade mission there. However history shows that the CCP only wants to sell to us, or profit from our land, but not buy from us.
Natalie Winters broke the story on X that in 2019, Governor Walz was a headline speaker at the national convention of the US China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA). This event was hosted in Minnesota, likely because of the strong ties Minnesota has with China.
The national USCPFA was established in 1974; the Minnesota chapter, one of the oldest, was incorporated in the same year. China-oriented “friendship associations” have been identified through think tank studies as influence organizations working through the CCP’s United Front to capture foreign elites.
The Minnesota USCPFA spawned a “Minnesota China Friendship Garden Society” in 2005 to pursue the creation of a China Friendship Garden, ultimately funded with $50k of Minnesota taxpayer dollars in 2014 through Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. This is an example of how CCP-linked influence organizations marshal US money to spread pro-CCP messaging.
St. Paul, Minnesota has had a sister-city relationship with Changsha, China since 1988. Sister-city relationships are starting to be recognized by lawmakers as governed by the CCP’s United Front; Indiana recently passed a bill banning sister-city relationships with China, but Governor Walz has yet to do so for Minnesota. In fact, the friendship garden funded with taxpayer money is called the “St.Paul - Changsha China Friendship Garden,” both named after and reinforcing the sister-city agreement.
Representative, and then Governor, Walz could have reflected and subsequently rejected any of these arrangements, as all of the Governors have been warned (and some have since opted) to do. But Governor Walz has not, and so he owns it.
Tim Walz is a truly captured elite, the ideological product of the CCP’s tourism-based charm offensive. He contributed to the system with his own company, which was in turn endorsed and subsidized by the CCP. Walz has given up on his early criticisms of the CCP simply because the CCP did not give up first, and because it’s the easier path. This is the destructive path down which he would let this country slide as VP.
