A deeper look at Walz's China ties ahead of Tuesday's debate

CATHY WURZER: Of course, the story we're following, Governor Tim Walz, Senator JD Vance will be in New York tomorrow for the first and only Vice Presidential debate. We will have, of course, coverage of that debate, 8:00 PM Central time tomorrow right here on MPR News. Walz's campaign has introduced him to the nation as a Midwestern dad and a high school football coach.

But Walz is also a world traveler with deep experience in China. It's a fact he used to brag about, sometimes exaggerate, earlier in his political career. But now that he's running for vice president, his campaign barely mentions it. Caspar von Au is a reporter visiting us from Germany, and he has this story.

REPORTER: On the streets leading down to the main road to Tiananmen Square, furious people stared in disbelief at the glow in the sky.

CASPAR VON AU: June 1989. Chinese soldiers kill hundreds, some sources say thousands of people in Beijing.

REPORTER: The troops have been firing indiscriminately.

CASPAR VON AU: The US State Department warned Americans to stay away from China. But just two months later, Tim Walz went in.

TIM WALZ: It was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people, and the opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important.

CASPAR VON AU: Walz was 25 years old, fresh out of college, when he volunteered for an organization called WorldTeach. He taught at a school in far Southern China and traveled all over the country during his year there. He visited Tiananmen Square and Tibet, even though China restricted travel there at the time.

TIM WALZ: For me, the conversations were fascinating, and it was interesting to watch--

CASPAR VON AU: That fascination is something Walz carried with him when he returned to the US, and he came up with a plan to share it with as many people as he could. Walz started taking his high school students on summer trips to China in 1993.

TIM WALZ: Hot. August 3, and here's Travis and Chad.

CASPAR VON AU: And on one of these trips, his student, Travis Hofmann, brought a camcorder.

TIM WALZ: It just unreal still sometimes to think like that we were there at that time just exploring and learning and having fun.

CASPAR VON AU: They saw the rice paddies, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall.

TIM WALZ: The eighth wonder of the world. Just can't imagine how steep these stairs are. There were a lot of places that we were at that we were the attraction, because a lot of the Chinese people and places that we went to, they're like, wow. Never seen an American before.

CASPAR VON AU: And then, there was the food.

TIM WALZ: This is us eating escargot.

CASPAR VON AU: In the video, Walz flashes a big grin as he pokes a toothpick into a snail shell and pulls out the meat.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SARA LOHMEYER: We had the most elaborate meals, three meals a day.

CASPAR VON AU: Sara Lohmeyer went on the trip in 1994, and she remembers that some of the students didn't like the local cuisine, so they snuck away to McDonald's.

SARA LOHMEYER: And we all got in so much trouble, and they served us very American food the next day. I mean, that is probably the only time I ever saw him upset.

CASPAR VON AU: Walz continued to take students to China virtually every year until the early 2000s. And when he ran for Congress in 2006--

REPORTER: And now a debate in the race for Minnesota's 1st Congressional District--

CASPAR VON AU: --he emphasized his international experience.

TIM WALZ: --by becoming the best teacher I could be by achieving the highest rank in the military that I could achieve, and by starting cooperations with an incredibly important area of the world with China and taking hundreds and hundreds of students to learn that, too. I think that gives me a unique perspective that is a lot more Minnesota and a lot less Washington.

CASPAR VON AU: After Walz was elected, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named him to the Congressional Executive Commission on China. Walz told MPR News at the time, he wanted to use his new position to work on trade issues and human rights.

TIM WALZ: There have been gaping holes in our trade policy that were not well thought out. When President Clinton was in office and disconnected human rights and workers' rights from most favored nation status for China, I think we lost a good bargaining tool.

CASPAR VON AU: Walz was so proud of his experience in China when he was a Congressman that, occasionally, he even appears to have exaggerated it, like when he commemorated the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989.

TIM WALZ: As a young man, I was just going and going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong and was in Hong Kong in May of '89. And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in, and I still remember the train station in Hong Kong. It was a large number--

CASPAR VON AU: But newspaper articles published at the time make it appear unlikely that he was in Hong Kong that May. One from mid-August quoted Walz and said he was leaving for WorldTeach in a few days. Walz also appears to have exaggerated the number of times he has been to China.

TIM WALZ: I lived in China. And as I said, I've been there about 30 times.

CASPAR VON AU: But to make 30 separate visits between his first trip in 1989 and that interview in 2016, he would have had to go to China more than once a year on average, and we were only able to find one official visit during his entire time in Congress. So we asked the Harris-Walz campaign about it.

And after weeks of searching, a spokesman confirmed that Walz traveled from the US to China closer to 15 times. But Walz isn't exaggerating his experience with China anymore now that he's running for Vice President, and Republicans have tried to turn it into a liability. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer cast Walz's China connections as suspicious during an interview on Fox News.

JAMES COMER: It's very possible that China would be grooming an up and coming rising star in the political process to try to have a foothold in our government.

CASPAR VON AU: But Walz wasn't a rising star when he made most of his trips to China. He was a small town social studies teacher. Comer's office didn't respond to interview requests for this story.

PETER HESSLER: Just sort of reflects the xenophobia of the moment and the Sinophobia of the moment, which is that anything that involves China is suspect.

CASPAR VON AU: Peter Hessler lived in China for more than a decade and has written four books about the country.

PETER HESSLER: I think that what's most interesting to me is that we have somebody who's a Vice Presidential candidate who has actually lived in the developing world, which is a real rarity. I mean, if you look at our presidents and vice presidents, American policy has enormous impact on parts of the world that are developing, that have gone through poverty and isolation. And almost none of our leaders have spent much time in those places.

CASPAR VON AU: That experience may very well be an asset if Walz becomes Vice President. But it appears that his campaign doesn't see it as something that will help him get elected. Walz's profile on its website makes no mention of China. With reporting from Forest Hunt and Curtis Gilbert, I'm Caspar von Au, MPR News.

CATHY WURZER: So we want to know a little bit more about this reporting project. We've called Curtis Gilbert, Senior Editor with APM Reports, who's in studio. This was extensive. This was a lot of digging around in records and background. I want to know how you all started.

CURTIS GILBERT: Well, with investigative reporting, it often starts with records, lots and lots of records. We went through old yearbooks-- big thanks to Hannah Yang, our reporter in Mankato, for going through the archives there at the high school-- old newspaper articles, business filings in Minnesota and Nebraska.

Governor Walz had a travel agency that he founded with his wife, Gwen, that helped run some of these trips over the years. We looked at military records, congressional travel reports, financial disclosures, personnel files from Mankato. I mean, really covered the waterfront. And those records then lead you to people.

We really got pumped when Caspar von Au, our wonderful German fellow who's visiting us here at APM Reports for a couple of months, tracked down this old VHS tape. We actually get to hear Governor Walz and see Governor Walz in China in 1995.

This is something-- there was no other video that we could find anywhere or any other recording of any kind of him in China, even though he'd been there a whole bunch. And I think that tape really gives you a feel for what a really incredible experience-- as you hear from the former students in that story-- these trips to China really were.

CATHY WURZER: Curtis, when this first came up-- we've heard the governor talk about China before. And, of course, he's visited China and had some dealings state level with China. I'm wondering, if this was another country, would there be so much attention on his visits and his history with that country versus say, China?

CURTIS GILBERT: Yeah. I think there is something that is really kind of interesting about the way Walz's history in China overlays with China's history in the world and America's relationship with China and how that's really changed. When Governor Walz went to China in 1989 for the first time, it was really a poor country.

And our intern, Forest Hunt, actually did a bunch of interviews with people who were affiliated with WorldTeach at this time, that nonprofit organization that Walz volunteered for when he went there. It was really a country that was hungry for teachers, particularly teachers who spoke English. China at that time was, and I believe still, making really all students learn English. So this was a big deal.

And what's interesting is that when you go back then and listen to those debates when Walz was first running for Congress in 2006, you can hear him bring up China, and this is a point of pride. This really isn't a political asset. It sets him apart from just being a run of the mill high school teacher.

He's a high school teacher with deep international experience. Walz's opponent, Gil Gutknecht, is sitting there-- standing there, I should say, on the stage with him. Doesn't make a big deal out of it. It wasn't seen as a political liability then.

And that is what's really different now. China is this ascendant power, this rival to the United States, and even potentially an adversary. And I think the reason that this is now more potentially a political liability is because of that different relationship between the US and China.

CATHY WURZER: And the story mentions a Republican investigation. What are they looking for, and have they gotten any response from Governor Walz or the campaign?

CURTIS GILBERT: Well, they are kind of looking for whatever they can get. Obviously, this is, the heat of a presidential, vice presidential campaign. And, of course, if you're on the other side, you're looking for anything that you can use to take some of the shine off of the image that the Harris-Walz campaign is presenting.

James Comer, who you heard a clip from in that story from Caspar, he asked the FBI to turn over anything regarding any Chinese entity or an individual with whom Mr. Walz may have engaged or partnered. And that's a really wide net. However, that was the first letter that Comer sent to the FBI.

He sent another one a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, he hadn't heard anything. And there was a quote from that letter I thought was telling. Comer says the FBI appears to deem these concerning facts unpersuasive to require its cooperation with this congressional investigation. So it really sounds like they haven't dug up much or haven't gotten much cooperation from the FBI at this point.

CATHY WURZER: I was trying to remember what the governor's record on China was while he was in Congress.

CURTIS GILBERT: Well, I think it's really a nuanced picture. I mean, he was an advocate of a cooperative relationship with China. You hear him talking about that in some of the old tape that we went through, but also certainly a critic of China. He looked at it as a country that had a checkered record on human rights and workers' rights, and so he wasn't shy about saying that. It was really consistent with America's overall policy towards China. Walz, as a Representative of the US government, kind of echoed that.

CATHY WURZER: Say, finally, are you expecting some questions about his history with China in tomorrow's debate?

CURTIS GILBERT: Well, these debates so far this presidential cycle have been full of surprises, so far be it from me to predict what on Earth might be said into those microphones. But I'm thinking that I think it's likely that JD Vance is probably going to try to bring something up about this. I kind of doubt that Governor Walz would bring it up on his own. And I think that kind of stands in contrast from the first time that he ran for public office 18 years ago.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. All right. Thank you. Well reported. Thank you, Curtis. Good work.

CURTIS GILBERT: You're welcome, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Curtis Gilbert, Senior Editor with APM Reports. By the way, you can read this full story right now. It's up at mprnews.org. Speaking of tomorrow night's debate, we will have special coverage starting at 8:00 PM Central time on air and online.