The China Walz

On the ground experience in China is a first for a VP candidate*

No one has ever called me “Minnesota Nice” but I still think of myself as half Minnesotan - not mixed race but mixed state (Minnesota, California, and now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts). My father was a Minnesotan and it is his mother, my grandmother, I think of, reading about Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States.

I remember a conversation with Grandma when I was in my late teens. She was still working, finishing expensive men’s sweaters at home. She beckoned me close and folded the sweater she was stitching so I could see the inside. “Look at this,” she said in a whisper, “Remember. You should always look for this label.”

It was the label of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. She was whispering because her son, my college-educated father, had become a Republican and disapproved of unions.

Her bedroom closet smelled of vinegar and spices from the stacked jars of homemade pickles and relishes. My favorite was the watermelon rind pickles, dark with molasses and fragrant with cinnamon and cloves. She had a big garden behind the tiny house, and along a wall was a long bed of mint in bloom, buzzing with bees. Her black cat usually slept there.

The cat was a whispered problem between my parents because Grandma had named it with a word that they made clear should never, ever pass our lips. Dad was a believer in the domino theory of Communism, and I think he voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. He was nonetheless a quiet supporter of civil rights and we grew up knowing that “prejudice” of any kind was wrong. This didn’t get put to much of a test since we never met anyone who wasn’t white (except the Japanese friends I’ve written about), but the rule was firm. My sense is that he could have convinced his mother to change the cat’s name. She would, I’m sure, have stood with Governor Walz today, and I’ll bet she would love the idea of a woman president.

The China Walz

Tim Walz was a surprise choice for vice-presidential candidate. More surprising is his longstanding connection with China. Minnesota is close to the center of a landmass of close to 25 million square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles). The coasts, and other countries (except for Canada), are a long way away. Middle Americans have had a hard time visualizing the big wide world, especially since that part of the country was settled, for the most part, by people like my great-grandparents, poor migrants from northern Europe. (As Garrison Keillor used to say, Lake Wobegon was populated by dumb Norwegian farmers.)

Americans are uniquely insular and at the same time, unfortunately, self-important. Our politicians have to play to audiences who expect to be reassured that this being the greatest country on earth. This is nothing new. In the 19th century, Frances Trollope (mother of the novelist) wrote that, “Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation.”

Presidential candidate (and current VP) Kamala Harris, for example, has been saying that “only in America” could two middle-class kids be aiming at the White House. Well, yes, because the White House is in America. But plenty of democratic countries are led by people who were middle-class kids. Over a hundred years ago, the first Labour prime minister of the UK, Ramsay MacDonald, was the illegitimate son of a housemaid and farm laborer. Mao Zedong was a middle-class kid. (FYI: in the US, “middle class” means blue collar workers - in the UK, middle class is a higher social tier.)

Tim Walz is an unusual American leader in that he sees a bigger world out there, and has on the ground familiarity with a part of it that really matters. News reports say he has visited China 30 times! In addition, he’s been inspiring others to see that bigger world for a very long time. Politico interviewed a former student who himself became a teacher.

There was one that stood out, now that I look back on it in 20 years. We were reading about France’s attempts to come up with social policies around Muslim women covering themselves in certain public places, and whether or not we believe that to be a Western ideal or an example of this demand for democracy gone a little bit too far, that’s maybe not as respectful as we want it to be of cultural differences and identity.

I was doing a lot of listening that day. Walz did a really good job of making kids feel that cognitive dissonance of what it’s like to grow up in the most powerful country in the world, but also these things that you would never consider as a white middle-class kid in southern Minnesota….

Somewhere toward the whiteboard, at eye level, he had a giant photograph of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. When I later went to Cambodia, I thought of him, and remembered seeing this incredibly exotic, beautiful place. [As a student,] I was like, “There’s no way I’m going to get there. I’m just a kid in high school from Minnesota.” That was just another one of those subtle things that if you were in a Walz classroom, you kind of felt like you could do those things. He made students feel like that was within their reach no matter who they were.¹

Walz’s familiarity with China does not mean he will minimize human rights, trade, and national security issues. After all, his experience in China began in the year of the Tiananmen massacre (which many Chinese people do not even know about). But he will also see potential for improvement, and cooperation. I would imagine that he would say, in private anyway, that he loves China - as I do. Because who could not love that vibrant, beautiful, fascinating country and its convivial people?

Pro-China or Anti-China?

When I first thought of publishing about China (Pro-China or Anti-China? A Publisher’s Dilemma), I went to Washington DC. One senior person told me “you don’t want to be seen here as a panda hugger.” It was the first time I’d heard the term, but over the years I’ve been closely involved with people on all sides of US-China relations. The fiercest critics are the most ignorant, but there’s a tier of critics who know China very well indeed and who are smug, after being ignored during the years when there was much more positive feeling about the trajectory of China’s development.

Observers far more expert than I were also sanguine, seeing the vibrant economic and cultural exchanges as laying groundwork for a more open outlook and growing understanding. Business was booming. Chinese tourists were flocking to America and Europe. Across the world there were projects underway to promote Chinese language learning. Ambitious college students wanted to get experience in China on their resumes.

I was embedded during those years with people who were constantly going to and from China, and my son was living and working there. We had an extraordinary chance to see it for ourselves and I felt so fortunate when I read what Gaspar da Cruz, Portuguese Dominican priest, wrote in the first Western book published about China, published in 1569:

I hereby give readers a necessary warning by which they can conjecture the greatness of the things of China, viz.—that whereas distant things often sound greater than they really are, this is clean contrary (because China is much more than it sounds), and the sight must be seen and not heard, because hearing it is nothing in comparison with seeing it.²

As my daughter said yesterday, even when you’re with a bunch of Chinese officials or dealing with weird political stuff, you know that there’s an amazing culture and history there.

And Tim Walz saw China. He and his wife Gwen led student trips every summer for years, from the early 1990s, traveling in a far less globalized and modernized China. I’ll bet their hotels had a little room on every other floor where you would refill your hot water thermos to make tea. He and his wife would have had to explain how to use an Asian toilet.

The most important thing, though, is that Walz will have had a great time. He has a sense of humor and a convivial spirit. I’ll bet he found ways to joke and laugh with people, even without a common language. I remember, for example, a shared moment with the driver who had picked us up at the airport on our first trip to China. The woman who met us directed the drive to the wrong hotel. As she argued, waving our passports at the desk clerk, I looked over at the driver, who had had to haul our suitcases in to the lobby. I could see that he too knew we were in the wrong place. We both rolled our eyes and grinned. I smothered a giggle. Eventually she stalked back and ordered him to get the suitcases back in the van.

I wonder if Walz learned some Chinese songs. I’ve been at elaborate banquets that turned into songfests, one high-powered, serious person after another standing to entertain us with a favorite song while everyone else clapped and offered toasts.

Tim and Gwen Walz must have similar memories from their many student trips, which I suspect were much more educational than the formal tours organized for congressional delegations, who stay in fancy Western hotels after the official meetings and banquets. Walz has seen developments, good and bad, at first hand. He has met with the Dalai Lama. After being elected to congress, he served on the Congressional Commission on China when fellow Democrat Rep Jim McGovern, known for his work on human rights, was co-chair.³ I expect Vice President Tim Walz to be a valuable strategist and negotiator as a result of this knowledge and experience.

This Is China

I met Rep Jim McGovern in 2019 at an event in Massachusetts and intended to talk to him about the Train Campaign. But he had mentioned in his speech his new role as co-chair of the China Commission, so that’s what we ended up talking about. And he invited me to come to his office in Washington to talk about China. I gave him and his staffers copies of This Is China, which I had had printed with a different title: What Trump Doesn’t Know About China. (I note that Rep McGovern was recently sanctioned by China.⁴)

I wish I could put a copy of 100 Classic Chinese Poems, translated by Qiu Xianglong and illustrated with Chinese paintings, into the hands of every China-curious American, along with a copy of Berkshire’s This Is China: The First 5,000 Years, with its new final chapter by Professor Kerry Brown. Each short book offers a window into Chinese history and culture.

While watching videos is not enough, I’m still glad we collecting street scenes to share on YouTube. I especially like this one, taken on a Sunday in 2013 in the park by the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The dancers are having such fun, while the crowd looks like they’ve been teleported from the 1960s.

Thinking ahead, I realize that there will be new opportunities to help educate Americans (and others) about China. The book China 101 was cancelled during the pandemic, but maybe I’ll revive it. I have a long list of topics to include - everything from the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese to why China hands⁵ are always referring to black and white cats.

* James Fallows commented (I’m adding it here to keep the record clear!): “But for the record, Walz is not the first VP candidate with on-scene experience in China. George H. W. Bush was based in Beijing in 1974 and 1975, in the earliest days of the US-China rapprochement. Of course he then ran against Ronald Reagan for the 1980 GOP nomination, then served as Reagan's VP.” I had thought Bush was the ambassador, but officially he was “the chief of the Liaison Office.”

1. From Politico: “Tim Walz Was My Teacher 20 Years Ago. Here’s What I Learned. A former student of the new vice-presidential candidate opens up.” And here’s an article in the Guardian: “‘On fire with excitement’: Tim Walz’s former students react to nomination.”

2. Tractado em que so cõtam muito por esteso as cousas da China (Treatise in which is told many things about China), from Donald Lach's Asia in the Making of Europe.

3. Gift link to the Washington Post’s story: “Walz has a long history with China. But he’s not ‘pro-China.’”

4. “China sanctions US Rep. McGovern for ‘interference’ in its domestic affairs.”

5. “China hand” is a term long applied to Westerners familiar with China. Another is “China watcher.” These are generally complimentary, unlike panda hugger or China hawk.