Chinese Communist Party agents put in a lot of work trying to manipulate the governor of New York, according to a federal indictment, but as details emerge about Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), the Democratic nominee for vice president, it appears the CCP’s investment in him is generating greater returns. This includes advocating socialism, downplaying rights abuses, and supporting CCP-linked people and organizations.
Of his first trip to China, to teach English in 1989, Walz said, “I’ll never be treated that well again.” He recounted being showered with “more gifts than I could bring home” and housed in conditions far better than those of Chinese teachers. This early CCP investment in Walz paid off.
First, Walz became a mouthpiece for Chinese communism. In 1991, while teaching social studies in Nebraska, he told students that communism “means that everyone is the same and everyone shares.” There was, he enthused, free housing and food for everyone. It’s hardly a conspiracy theory to point out that the CCP gave Walz gifts, and then he delivered CCP talking points.
Walz was actually in Hong Kong when the Chinese Communist Party sent tanks against pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square. But there is no hint in the quotes from Walz’s lecture of any reference to the CCP’s human rights abuses or repression. He even defended the CCP’s one-child policy, which included forced abortion and sterilization.
According to a 2019 FBI report, the CCP uses “joint research opportunities, language and cultural training, [and] visiting students and professors” to manipulate educators and their institutions.
The second payoff from the CCP’s investment was Walz facilitating other Americans’ travel to China. While this was no doubt mostly innocent, the FBI points out that “sponsorship of foreign travel” and “overseas professional opportunities” are tools of choice for foreign adversaries. Walz and his wife started their own company to send American students to China.
As Walz entered politics, his comments on China became more equivocal. This lets supportive media characterize his record as mixed, complicated, or even “hawkish.” Of course, he continues to promote socialism, claiming recently that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”
As governor of Minnesota, Walz has continued to serve CCP interests. He opposed President Donald Trump’s hard line on China trade and repeatedly promoted the Hormel Institute, which has a record of working with CCP-connected entities such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a possible source of COVID-19.
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in 2018 that “China, from a counterintelligence perspective, represents the broadest, most challenging threat we face … because with them, it’s a whole state effort.” Yet in 2019, Walz apparently headlined the national convention of a group with radical roots that is linked to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, which the State Department accuses of being a CCP-directed group “tasked with co-opting subnational governments [that] has sought to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the [China’s] global agenda.”
Walz even appointed a person with known CCP connections to the board of his Council On Asian Pacific Minnesotans, “an executive branch, non-cabinet agency” that advises “the Governor, the Legislature [and] state agencies.” Chang Wang is now the “interim chair” of that board despite a longstanding affiliation with a group that has pledged to support the CCP.
Unlike Walz’s Minnesota, in New York, it appears the CCP has had to work much harder to wield influence.
Linda Sun joined the administration of then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2012 as director of Asian American affairs and was later his deputy chief diversity officer. From there, she rose to be deputy chief of staff to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). Federal law enforcement officials allege that Sun “acted as an undisclosed agent” of the CCP while working in the Empire State’s executive branch.
Prosecutors accuse her of manipulating official statements made by the current and former governors to benefit the CCP. In one instance, Sun provided CCP officials with the draft of a speech Hochul was set to deliver. The result was the removal of any reference to human rights abuses against China’s Uyghur minority.
The indictment alleges that Sun repeatedly blocked meetings between state officials and representatives of Taiwan, while counseling CCP officials on how to improve their own outreach efforts. It chronicles an attempt by CCP officials and Sun to arrange for Hochul to visit China. For serving as a secret agent of the CCP within New York state government, Sun was rewarded with “millions of dollars in transactions” for her husband’s business, a job in China for her cousin, travel, event tickets, and even “Nanjing-style salted ducks.”
Hochul’s trip to China never happened, despite the CCP spending lavishly on its agent within state government. Walz, on the other hand, has been to China more than 30 times. He was a “visiting fellow at the CCP-sanctioned Macau Polytechnic University until at least 2007,” per the New York Post.
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Walz’s repeated close contacts with the CCP stretching back 35 years raise obvious questions. Does he remain in contact with CCP officials or agents, even in a personal capacity? Has he received gifts, or anything else of value, from anyone connected with the CCP since he entered public office? And where exactly does he want to take America’s China policy, including on the issue of Taiwan?
The FBI’s counterintelligence office warns of the CCP “employing tactics that seek to influence lawmakers and public opinion to achieve policies that are more favorable to China.” It is clear that the CCP invested in Walz, but it remains unclear just how much it got in return and how much more its investment might pay off.
Trent England is the founder and executive director of Save Our States and a producer of Safeguard: An Electoral College Story.