Tim Walz Is Not a Chinese Spy, but He Did Teach in China in the 1980s

Since he emerged on the national political scene, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has won many people over with his plainspoken manner and his fairly normal life story. One of the details about that life story that has drawn the most attention, though, is Tim's single year teaching in China in the late 1980s.

Although China is now a geopolitical rival to the U.S., it wasn't viewed that way when Walz was teaching there. Nevertheless, many on the right have offered conspiracy theories that link Tim to the Chinese government and suggest that he's some sort of sleeper agent.

The conspiracy theory dates back to Walz's time teaching English in China, and the latest details suggest that he was in a heated love affair with the daughter of a Chinese official at the time.

In an interview with The New York Post, a woman named Jenna Wang claimed that she fell completely in love with Walz when he was there in the 1980s. Wang said that she expected that Walz would propose, but he instead left the country in 1989.

“I was deeply insulted, hurt and I had to leave that place, because many people knew that we had a relationship,” Wang said. She also said that Walz was a man who lacked character, and that his lack of a proposal had left her heartbroken.

Of course, none of this is proof that Walz is compromised. It's really just the sordid details of a past love affair through the eyes of someone who felt spurned by that affair.

Even before the details of this affair came to light, though, there were already suggestions that Walz was some sort of Chinese asset. Jim Comer, the head of the House Oversight Committee, suggested as much during an appearance on the Jesse Watters show in August.

“It’s very concerning that the FBI, to my knowledge, has never even investigated this,” Comer began. “Now, we’re still trying to determine what extent they have — as far as all the trips this high-level official from the United States government, even before that, in the military — made to China.”

When Walz traveled to China, though, he was not a high-level official. He wasn't in government at all.

“This is a guy that really has embraced China’s view of the world, the Chinese ideology, which is communism,” Comer continued.

“This guy is very dependent on the government,” he said. “And I believe he thinks that China, the business model that China’s had, might be the ideal model for the United States.”

Even if Walz did have an affair as a young man, there is no evidence that he has been compromised by the Chinese government. That may be what many on the right want to believe, but there is basically no truth behind the claims. Tim Walz lived in China, yes, but that's about all we know for sure.