US Vice-President Kamala Harris and her election running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, during a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Aug 6. - Reuters
BEIJING: As a young American in China in 1989, Tim Walz – Vice-President Kamala Harris’ pick of running mate in the upcoming elections – was one of the few foreigners living in the under-developed country then.
As part of a volunteer programme, Walz, 60, had spent that year teaching US history and English to high-school students in southern Guangdong province.
Even after he returned to the United States, he visited China often for work. The education company that he and his wife set up would organise annual summer trips there.
Most notably, he even chose to spend part of his honeymoon in China after getting married on June 4, 1994 – the fifth anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square protests. His wife Gwen Walz told a US newspaper then that Walz “wanted to have a date he will always remember”.
Walz’s connections to China have been picked apart following Harris’ announcement of his candidacy on Tuesday (Aug 6), at a time when any connection to the world’s second-largest economy can be weaponised against candidates in the upcoming presidential elections in November.
Their Republican adversaries have taken aim at Walz’s extensive experience in China to raise voters’ concerns that the two-term Minnesota governor will adopt a softer approach against America’s greatest rival, if elected.
Richard Grenell, former acting director of the US National Intelligence under then President Donald Trump in 2020 and a Republican party member, called Walz “the pick of Communist China” on social platform X.
Trump, who is on the Republican Party’s ticket, will be running against Harris.
But analysts told The Straits Times that it is unlikely for Walz – or even Harris – to run contrary to the current hardline approach towards China in the US Congress, no matter what their inclinations are.
“The strong anti-China climate in the US Congress will not allow any politician to be seen as being soft on China,” said Nanjing University international relations expert Zhu Feng.
“Walz’s current priority is to steady his footing in the Democratic Party, given his sudden elevation to vice-president nominee,” he added.
Harris was reportedly deciding between Walz, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state, and Mark Kelly, Arizona senator.
Analysts also pointed out that the role of the vice-president has traditionally not been one that holds a powerful sway over US foreign policy.
Assistant Professor Benjamin Ho, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, said: “Everyone’s looking at the name at the top of the ticket.”
So far, Harris has not stated her policy towards China for the latest election, Bo Zhengyuan, partner at Plenum, a consultancy firm in Shanghai, pointed out.
“Even so, domestic issues, such as how to uplift the US economy, will be the main focus of the American elections,” he added.
Analysts do not think that Walz’s experience in China was an important factor in Harris’ choice, despite Walz having the strongest China experience among the four candidates, including Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, a senator from Ohio.
Walz was on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an independent agency of the US government that monitors human rights in China, and co-sponsored resolutions that supported democracy activists in mainland China and Hong Kong, and called for an investigation into the treatment of imprisoned protesters of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Prof Ho, the author of the book, China’s Political Worldview And Chinese Exceptionalism, said the US had “always maintained pressure on China on human rights, and it was unlikely that Walz would let up on that”.
Prof Zhu said that Harris had picked Walz “to win over voters that she couldn’t reach”.
Walz is a retired US Army non-commissioned officer and a former schoolteacher, who has consistently appealed to white, rural voters.
On Chinese social media, netizens have highlighted Walz’s experience in China, with the hashtag “Harris’ running mate has teaching experience in China” one of the hottest search topics on microblogging platform Weibo since Aug 6.
Posts containing the hashtag had received 14.2 million views, with netizens split on whether Walz’s experience in China would mean warmer US-China ties.
“He has witnessed China’s progress since the 1980s, and (hopefully) has a fairer view towards our development and how difficult it has been,” one netizen said.
Another netizen pointed out that Walz’s first time in China was during the controversial period of 1989, and “it really isn’t clear what his view of China is, given that the international community had been so critical of Beijing’s (crackdown on the protesters) then”. - The Straits Times/ANN
