Walz’s claim that he was in China during Tiananmen Square protests undercut by unearthed newspaper reports

Newly unearthed reports contradict previous claims made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about his travel to China, including a claim that the Democratic vice presidential nominee traveled to China for a teaching position in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that ended in hundreds of protesters killed by the Chinese government.

Newly unearthed reports contradict previous claims made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about his travel to China, including a claim that the Democratic vice presidential nominee traveled to China for a teaching position in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that ended in hundreds of protesters killed by the Chinese government. The discrepancy over Walz’s relationship to China comes ahead of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate in New York, where Republican allies of Ohio Sen. JD Vance have signaled that the GOP vice presidential nominee may use Walz’s history in China to attack his rival. Walz regularly organized and chaperoned trips to China during his time as a teacher prior to entering politics. Walz had previously said he visited Hong Kong in “May of ’89,” weeks before the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. During a 2014 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China honoring the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, Walz, then a Minnesota congressman, appeared to recall specific details of his trip to China at that time. “As a young man, I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong, and was in Hong Kong in May of ’89,” he said. “And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.” “The opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important. And it was a very interesting summer to say the least. Because if you recall, as we moved in that summer and further on and the news blackouts and things that went on, you certainly can’t black out news from people if they want to get it,” he continued. Walz’s 2014 claim that he visited China during the Tiananmen Square protests has been repeated in media reports. But contemporaneous newspaper reports first resurfaced by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, place Walz in Nebraska around that time. An issue of the Alliance Times-Herald dated May 16, 1989, features a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storeroom. In the photo’s caption, the paper notes that Walz “will take over the job” of staffing the storeroom from a retiring guardsman and “will be moving to Alliance,” Nebraska. A separate newspaper article about Walz’s planned trip to China published by a Nebraska-based outlet in April 1989 reported that he planned to travel to China in early August of that year.