cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1950212
On August 6, the US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris finally chose her running mate: the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, Timothy Walz. Subsequently, the media discovered that Walz had lived in China in his younger years. From September 1989 to July 1990, he worked as a foreign teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School in Guangdong province.
In the context of recent Sino-US competition, and given the shift in the most recent administrations between the fierce confrontation of Trump and the competitive risk control approach of Biden, the vice-presidential candidate’s China experience has become a focus of attention both inside and outside China.
How does Walz understand China? What is his position on Sino-US relations?
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For more on Walz’s time teaching English in China, our reporter contacted Ms. Pang, a recently retired Chinese language teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School. Pang was a colleague of Walz’s, who she says was the school’s first foreign teacher.
At the time, Pang says, Walz was known to teachers and students as simply as “tīm” (添) — a Cantonese transliteration of his first name. Tīm was well-liked, according to Pang: “Everyone treated him like a celebrity,” she says. “He left a good impression on everyone. He was very young and had a bright smile… Even now when I see pictures of him I recognize that same wide, infectious smile pressing his cheeks up.”
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In an interview at the time, Walz bemoaned the “unbearably hot” Guangdong weather but praised his students’ curiosity about all things American. At Christmas time, he said that students and friends decorated a pine tree and brought it to his room.
“His colleagues would often laugh at him because as soon as he got his pay he went to the school store to buy ice cream,” Pang recalls. Walz didn’t understand Cantonese or Mandarin when he first arrived, Pang says, but he gradually began to learn.
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In terms of his political record, Waltz is far from a “dove” in his approach to China. He is a long-time supporter and advocate of political freedoms in China, and has criticized Beijing on issues ranging from Hong Kong to Tibet.
Both the 1989 student movement and the June 4 incident had a profound impact on Walz.
[…] As he and other volunteers watched the news from Hong Kong [where Walz worked as a teacher] on June 4, many decided to back out of the program. He had other ideas. “I felt it was more important than ever to go to China,” he said. He felt it was important, he recalled, for him to tell this story “so that the people of China knew that we stood with them.”
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Walz also touched on other issues sensitive to China, such as Tibet and Hong Kong. He voiced support for Tibetan autonomy and met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet. He joined a visit by US lawmakers to Tibet in November 2015 led by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. […] In a press release following the visit, the delegation “reiterated the imperative of respect for religious freedom and expression in Tibet; autonomy and democracy in Hong Kong; and respect for human and women’s rights across China. The delegation also expressed specific concerns related to the recent arrest and detention of human rights lawyers and activists.”On the issue of Hong Kong, he was an advocate early on in 2017 for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and in August of that year met with now-jailed Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), calling him “a true defender of democracy in China.” Pro-democracy activist Jeffrey Ngo Cheuk Hin (敖卓軒), a former member of Hong Kong’s Demosisto party, pointed out earlier this month that at the time of the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, Walz was an important advocate for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
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The same report [in the Time magazine] also said Walz is concerned about the gap in trade between the US and China, and wants to improve their trade deficit by demanding that China abide by environmental standards, fair trade, and human rights. At the same time, he has publicly criticized Trump’s trade war footing with China, pointing out that Minnesota’s agricultural sector has been hit hard by slumping exports of commodities like soybeans and pork to China.