Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has touted traveling to China 30 times and being in Hong Kong when the Chinese Communist Party cracked down on student protests in 1989. But public records and a new statement from the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s campaign tell another story.
As a then-congressman in 2014, Walz described what he said was his proximity to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, a story that has since been picked up by national media outlets. The 2024 running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, moreover, previously said that he has taken 30 trips to China — a country Walz insisted in 2016 does not need “to [have] an adversarial relationship” with the United States.
However, contemporaneous news reports from 1989 indicate that Walz was in Nebraska, his home state, as the massacre unfolded, Minnesota Public Radio reported this week. Walz would go on to teach at a school in Guangdong, China. And contrary to Walz’s claim that he has visited China 30 times, the Harris-Walz campaign told Minnesota Public Radio that he has actually been to the country “closer to 15 times.”
“I still remember the train station in Hong Kong,” Walz said at a 2014 event in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“There was a large number of, especially European, I think, very angry that we would still go after what had happened, but it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels,” Walz said at the 2014 event.