As the U.S. elections draw closer, Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, has faced scrutiny over his longstanding ties to China.
Republicans have attacked Walz on his connection to China and — in addition to questioning some of his claims about his China experience — challenged his views on America’s primary geopolitical challenger.
China is not popular with the American public right now. According to the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of Americans view China unfavorably.
The reasons for these feelings are complicated but have to do with the public’s understanding that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China and that the Chinese haven’t been cooperative about getting to the bottom of what happened.
These views are also informed by China’s close ties to Russia and its support for Russia’s horrific war of aggression against Ukraine as well as the realization that China has stolen American intellectual property on a vast scale for decades.
So when Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), said in August that “Kamala Harris wanted to outsource our factories and jobs to China, but I didn’t expect her to outsource the selection of her running mate to China, too,” he is playing a very calculated game — one that is rippling through the American political scene as politicians in both parties try to show that their competitor is soft on China.
So it makes sense that Republicans would try to portray Tim Walz’s China connections in a negative light, with some going so far as to say Walz is a sort of Manchurian candidate.
We, however, see Walz’s China history in a different light.
Walz first visited China in the late ‘80s after college, teaching English in the western Chinese city of Xi’an. It was around the time of the Tiananmen Massacre, and Walz saw both darkness and light in contemporary China, as many have.
He visited several times after that initial stint teaching there, leading groups of students on tours around the country, showing them both the rich historical legacy of China while being candid with his students about Mao’s catastrophic rule, such as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.
As a congressman, he was a strong critic of China, and many China experts would see themselves in this quote from 2016: “I certainly was under the illusion that liberalizing trade and openness would have a significant impact on liberalization of personal freedoms. I have now seen that is not the case.”
He has met with the Dalai Lama, which always leaves China apoplectic, and co-sponsored a bill in support of jailed Nobel Laureate and dissident Liu Xiaobo. In short, his track record is not one of sympathy for the Chinese Communist Party.
While we admire the ability to recalibrate previous assumptions about China and his strong stance on China’s abysmal human rights record, it is something more subtle that makes us believe that Walz’s China background makes him a particularly strong vice presidential candidate.
We see in Walz the qualities and experience that often distinguish an excellent diplomat or intelligence officer. Those individuals have often spent years living abroad, gaining a deep understanding of cultures in which the U.S. wishes to have influence or simply comprehend them.
These officials understand the importance of personal relationships, experience and cultural knowledge, and know that misunderstandings and miscommunication can be deadly.
There is no substitute for traveling or living in a foreign country to help understand how foreigners think and learn what is important to them. Many countries send aspiring diplomats to study in the U.S. for just this reason.
To underscore just how valuable this on-the-ground knowledge is, we point to a few of our worst foreign policy crises, which occurred in places where we did not have a permanent presence on the ground.
There was no American diplomatic presence in Afghanistan or Iraq prior to the disastrous wars of the past few decades. Steven Coll’s recent book, “The Achilles Trap” is a painful account of just how little the U.S. administration knew about Saddam Hussein or Iraq before plunging into war.
When they are being honest, Republicans surely understand that experience overseas is a benefit to leadership. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush spent years living abroad and we benefited from their experience managing the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Walz’s experience is particularly important, as in recent years, U.S./China cultural exchanges have been severely reduced. From 2018-2019, there were approximately 1,639 US students in China compared to only 382 in 2020-2021. Businesspeople are curtailing travel and investment in China as the country has passed Draconian national security laws that threaten normal business procedures such as due diligence and market research.
As a result, we have less knowledge about America’s most important global competitor as tensions have increased.
Having someone with Tim Walz’s deep knowledge of China in a top governmental position could be a hugely important benefit should there be a major crisis with China during a Harris/Walz presidency.
And there is strong reason to believe that such a crisis could arise, whether it is war threatening to finally break out in the Taiwan Straits or a territorial dispute with the Philippines or Japan.
Every country values being respected. China is certainly no different. It carries a grudge against what it perceives as Western arrogance based on its history of exploitation in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Tim Walz has been a friend to China and likely knows more than most of our diplomatic corps about how the country works and the nature of Chinese society. The Chinese will value having such an interlocutor and it could ultimately turn out to be the difference between war and peace.
John Sipher is the founder of Spycraft Entertainment, the host of the podcast “Mission Implausible,” and previously a member of the CIA’s clandestine service for 28 years. Jeremy Hurewitz is the head of Interfor Academy and the author of the book “Sell Like a Spy.”