by Bethany Blankley
The U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee is seeking answers about any ties Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz has to the Chinese Communist Party. Walz has said he is proud of his ties to China dating back to 1989.
The commission spent several years investigating the political activities of the Chinese Communist Party in exerting influence on “senior figures of the political elite in the interests of the communist People’s Republic of China.”
As part of the ongoing investigation, committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, asked FBI Director Christopher Wray “to provide all information, documents and communications in the possession of the FBI relating to entities and officials associated with CCP” with whom Walz had established and cooperated. The FBI responded that its Foreign Influence Task Force “is investigating such CCP activities.”
The FBI continues to be uncooperative, and its “silence regarding Mr. Walz’s documented ties to organizations associated with the Chinese Communist Party is inexcusable,” Comer said.
Among the concerns cited were Walz’s recent meeting with CCP Consul General Zhao Jian to discuss “Sino-U.S. relations and subnational cooperation”; being a fellow at Macau Polytechnic University while in Congress, which is in line with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, “a political warfare program designed by President Xi Jinping to exert China’s influence around the world”; and securing more than $2 million and pushing for $5 million in federal funding for the Hormel Institute, “a Minnesota-based medical research facility that has a history of working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China,” which has been implicated in the spread of the coronavirus. The institute has also reportedly partnered with the Beijing Genomics Institute, “a group that the Pentagon has labeled as a Chinese military company,” Comer claims.
Comer says the concerns arose after the committee began investigating “federal agency responses to CCP influence and infiltration tactics, including the FBI’s own strategy.” Following a July 2024 FBI briefing on CCP influence operations, committee members concluded that “Walz’s history with CCP-affiliated entities bears the hallmarks of CCP influence operations.”
“The committee is concerned that Mr. Walz’s involvement with Chinese entities and officials may have allowed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence his decision-making as a congressman and governor and potentially would allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence the White House if Mr. Walz were elected vice president,” Comer said.
According to Walz, he has visited China about 30 times and is proud of his association, which began in 1989. Walz first taught abroad for a year in China after the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 3-4, 1989. Although estimates vary, “hundreds to thousands of protesters were killed … and as many as 10,000 were arrested” after the Chinese government imposed martial law to suppress pro-democracy protests. Walz told VOA News, “I felt it was more important than ever to go there, make sure that story was told and let the Chinese people know that we stand there, that we stand with them.”
Upon his return, he told the Chadron Record of Nebraska, “The Chinese have been mistreated and cheated by their government for years.” If they had had different leaders, “there would be no limit to what they could do. … [They] They are such kind, generous, capable people. They just gave and gave and gave to me.”
The experience had such an impact on Walz’s wife, Gwen, that she said they married on the fifth anniversary of the massacre. “He wanted to have a date that he would always remember,” she said. he said Scottsbluff Star-Herald. “They also organized a summer trip to China for their students and traveled there almost every summer until 2003,” according to her first lady organic.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who has also raised concerns about Walz’s ties to China, told The Center Square: “If you look at Kamala Harris, Tim Waltz and Colin Allred,” his Democratic rival in the U.S. Senate race, “they’ve all been systematically, far too cozy with communist China.”
Cruz has long warned of threats from the Chinese Communist Party, including infiltration of American universities, espionage, intellectual property theft, Chinese companies buying land near American military bases, sedate human rights abuses, murder and torture.
“China is the single greatest geopolitical threat to the United States for the next hundred years,” he told The Center Square. “When I said that a decade ago, I was a lone voice in Washington. Every Democrat disagreed with me, and a lot of Republicans disagreed. They looked at China and saw dollar signs. I think that’s changed, and I think Covid has changed.” He says the United States needs to adopt “a systematic, comprehensive strategy to combat communist China, very similar to what we had with the Soviet Union under Ronald Reagan.”
Walz served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China for nine years, supporting several human rights initiatives. he said Agri-Pulse “completely disagrees” that the U.S. should maintain hostile relations with China, but “the U.S. must stand firm on what the Chinese are doing in the South China Sea. … It is our business what happens in the South China Sea because freedom of navigation for the movement of our crops and products is critical to our economy as well as our national security. … We will trade with China, but they must play by the rules, whether from an environmental, fair trade or human rights perspective.”
Former President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on China, which the Biden-Harris administration has continued. Trump says he will expand them if elected.
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Bethany Blankley is a contributor Central Square.
Photo “Tim Walz” by Gage Skidmore.CC BY-SA 2.0.
