He’s been called Tiananmen Tim, Wuhan Walz, Totalitarian Tim, The Great Walz of China and much, much worse. Tim Walz, the vice-presidential pick of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has been the talk of the town for several days running, some of it edifying, some of it insubstantial, and much of it simply off the wall.
While Democrats hail the mild-mannered Minnesota governor for bringing balance and ballast to a Harris-Walz ticket, Republicans are raising questions about the man’s China connection.
Not long after graduating Chadron State College, Tim Walz joined a Harvard-organized program to teach English in China. Assigned to a classroom of 65 students in Foshan, Guangdong in 1989-1990, the future high school teacher was, by available accounts, a very ordinary wide-eyed stranger in a strange land.
He later told Americans back home how friendly and generous the ordinary citizens of China were despite the precipitous decline in US-China relations in the aftermath of the June 4, 1989 cr…