Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s year teaching in China began with a visit to Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests in the spring of 1989 and culminated with the deadly crackdown in Tiananmen Square in June. I have said this repeatedly for many years. In Beijing.
Walz said on a podcast in February that he was in Hong Kong, then a British colony, on “June 4, the day Tiananmen Square broke out,” and despite many challenges, he returned to China to pursue a teaching career. He said he had decided to move to the mainland. People were encouraging him not to do it.
Walz told the same story 10 years ago at a Congressional hearing, testifying that he was in Hong Kong in May 1989, adding: A station in Hong Kong. ”
But that wasn’t true. Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, actually taught at a high school in China as part of a program to send American teachers overseas, but he didn’t actually visit China until August 1989. .
According to contemporary Nebraska news reports, Walz remained in his home state throughout the spring and did not leave for China until August. And his campaign said Tuesday it does not dispute those accounts.
Mr. Walz’s version of events, which he told as a member of Congress in 2014, has been repeated by his campaign staff and reported by the New York Times and other news organizations, has him at the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes. brought closer. in modern history.
Although the political situation in China remained chaotic and uncertain as of August of the same year, it was in the spring of 1989 that students held protests calling for democratic reform, and the military crackdown on June 3 and 4 Protesters, soldiers, and bystanders were killed, sparking widespread repercussions. all over the world.
Walz suggests he showed courage in pursuing his plan to enter China to teach when others in the same program withdrew. August was a time of confusion and uncertainty about entering the country.
“A significant number of our citizens have decided not to come into the country,” Walz told Pod Save America in February.
“My thought at the time was that this was a great opportunity to go and tell what it was like,” he continued. “And I had a lot of freedom to do that. I could teach American history and tell that story.”
Walz also said in a 2019 radio interview that he was in Hong Kong on “June 4, 1989,” and during a hearing of the Congressional Executive Committee on China commemorating the 2009 Tiananmen Square protests. He was in Hong Kong, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Walz’s campaign did not respond to requests for clarification on why he repeatedly said he left Nebraska months earlier than he actually did.
Minnesota Public Radio first asked about the timing of Walz’s first trip to China on Monday. Mr. Walz graduated from Chadron State University in Chadron, Nebraska in May 1989. Among other things, a small article in the Chadron Record dated August 11 of that year stated that Mr. Waltz was leaving to teach in China that Sunday.
The Harris-Waltz campaign had no public comment on the story, saying only Tuesday that it does not dispute that Walz made a mistake about the timing. Mr. Walz was preparing to appear in New York on Tuesday night for a debate with Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate.
Walz also said he has traveled to China about 30 times — he took his students there many times as a teacher — but his campaign this week revealed that he has traveled from the United States to China. The number of trips came closest to this. 15.
Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Walz as her running mate in August, the campaign sent a document summarizing Walz’s experience in China in response to questions from a Times reporter. Asked when exactly Walz arrived in China in 1989, a campaign spokesperson said: “Governor Walz arrived in Hong Kong in late spring and was in Hong Kong during the protests. “Instead of leaving, I went to China and took up a teaching job.”
The campaign also cited several interviews and articles in which Walz described his experiences in China. The link included a February interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
While falsehoods have long been a staple of Republican candidate Donald J. Trump’s speeches, his campaign has taken aim at inaccuracies that have surfaced in Walz’s past statements. Walz has come under intense scrutiny over his service in the National Guard, particularly over his 2018 statement that he “carried weapons of war during a war.” Although Walz did not fight, the Harris campaign maintains that Walz’s statements were incorrect.
Republicans have also attacked Walz for misleading statements about the fertility treatments he and his wife received. Walz said his family used in vitro fertilization to start a family. However, the Harris-Waltz campaign recently revealed that the couple relied on another common sterilization procedure called intrauterine insemination (IUI) rather than IVF.
Walz also gave various versions of what happened when he was arrested for drunk driving in 1995. When he first ran for Congress in 2006, his campaign blamed a miscommunication with the state trooper who stopped him for the partial hearing loss he suffered while serving in a field artillery unit.
When the issue came up again during his 2018 gubernatorial bid, Walz acknowledged his sobriety problem and said he was watching college football the night he was arrested. In 2022, a Minnesota news outlet obtained a transcript of a March 1996 plea hearing that found Walz’s blood alcohol level was 0.128, well above Nebraska’s legal limit of 0.1 at the time. It was shown that Walz says he no longer drinks alcohol.
Although China later became a popular destination for many ambitious young people looking to study and work abroad, Usha Vance, wife of Senator Vance, also spent a short time in southern China in the 2000s. Conducted a teaching fellowship during the period. . Waltz has arrived for the first time.
At the time, China was still opening up after decades of turmoil under Chairman Mao Zedong, and student-led protests in Beijing sparked a frenzied movement against official corruption and calls for democracy. It developed into
On the night of June 3, 1989, Chinese soldiers carried out a crackdown that killed hundreds (some say thousands) of protesters and bystanders in Beijing and caused bloodshed in other Chinese cities. This caused a nasty conflict. Countless demonstrators were jailed, and others, including many foreigners who did not take part in the protests, also fled the country.
In the years that followed, China faced not only economic sanctions and political isolation but also international condemnation.
