‘He’s Trying to Hide Something’: Experts Raise Alarm over Walz’s China Ties

Concerns are mounting over Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz’s extensive ties to China, as new revelations emerge about his dozens of trips to the communist country and the propriety of his conduct as a member of the National Guard.

On Saturday, an anonymous source claiming to be a former student who accompanied Walz during a trip to China in 1995 told Alpha News that the Minnesota governor was a “true believer” in communist ideology. “At night, we’d go out, we’d walk the street fairs. We’d be buying souvenirs, and Tim was always buying the Little Red Book. He said he gave them as gifts … I saw him buy at least a dozen on the trip,” the source said. The “Little Red Book” refers to a collection of quotations from Mao Zedong, the founder and former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mao’s social policies are estimated to have led to the deaths of approximately 40 to 80 million people through starvation, mass executions, and prison labor.

The report stands in contrast to a number of statements and actions that Walz made during his 12-year tenure as a congressman. The New York Times characterized his criticisms of China’s human rights record as “sharp” while he served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Walz “cosponsored a resolution demanding the release of Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate” and “criticized China’s unfair trade practices and crackdown on rights lawyers and religious groups.” He was also part of a delegation that met with the Dalai Lama and backed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

Still, questions remain over where Walz stands in relation to the communist regime and its ideology, which lawmakers, U.S. intelligence officials, and citizens say poses the greatest threat to the U.S. Earlier this month, Walz appeared to sympathize with socialism, stating that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” In addition, Walz made at least 12 personal trips to China while serving in the National Guard, which Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) described last week as an “obvious security risk” and has demanded details about the possible “risks of hostile foreign intelligence activity” from the Pentagon.

One expert who is highly concerned with Walz’s activity while in the National Guard and his other ties to the CCP is Gordon Chang, a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute. Over the weekend, he spoke with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins about the issue during “This Week on the Hill.”

“This is the one thing that I think disqualifies the ticket. … Tim Walz, in 24 years in the National Guard of Nebraska and Minnesota, would certainly have had a security clearance,” he pointed out. “Now, you can’t travel to another country without reporting that, and certainly a pattern of 30 visits would raise eyebrows at the very least. This is really important. And if Walz did not report his travel, that says that he was trying to hide something from the Pentagon, which means he’s now trying to hide something from the American people at a critical time.”

Perkins concurred. “[H]aving had a security clearance, I know any time you have an interaction with a foreign national, you have to report it. It’s very onerous and a lot of paperwork [is] involved there.”

Chang further called into question Walz’s connections with the CCP in order to take numerous trips to China with American high school students. “[T]hat’s an activity that would have to have been approved by the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department. The United Front Work Department has one goal, which is to subvert foreign countries. So this is highly suspicious activity. And when you consider all the other things that he’s done, he can explain away one event or two events, but he can’t explain away the pattern. The pattern is extremely disturbing. And somebody with that pattern should not be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.”

Chang went on to observe that while the CCP’s reaction to Walz being picked as the Democratic VP candidate has been muted, reaction from Chinese intelligentsia has not. “Chinese academics … are ecstatic about Waltz’s selection because they know that he’s the type of person who wants to go back to the failed engagement policy of five decades,” he contended. “That policy has had the United States not defend itself, and the Chinese just love it. So we see these comments from regime-sanctioned experts saying that this is a great thing.”

In addition, Chang explained how the CCP is able to infiltrate the upper echelons of American society through the example of Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell (Calif.)

“China first contacted Eric Swalwell, not when he was on the House Intelligence Committee, which would have been, of course, great value to China. They first contacted him when he was on the city council of Dublin City, California,” he noted. “That’s not to say that Swalwell has done anything wrong, but it is to say that China’s penetration of the American political class starts at a very early age, grooming people who are on city councils. So there wasn’t just one Swalwell. There wasn’t just dozens of Swalwells. There had to have been hundreds of them. And that shows you that the penetration of our class has been thorough.”

“China uses every point of contact to take down our republic, and we have got to start severing those contacts if we want to save ourselves, because right now we’re being overwhelmed,” Chang concluded.