Self-professed Sinophile Tim Walz said he "misspoke" when he said he had been in Hong Kong during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in China's Tiananmen Square.
The Democratic candidate for vice president had previously said he had been in what was then the British colony of Hong Kong as Chinese troops crushed the protests on June 4, 1989, but a Minnesota public radio station reported that he didn’t arrive in Hong Kong until August 1989.
"I got there that summer and misspoke on this," Walz said during a debate with Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, when asked by a CBS News moderator to clarify his movements at that time.
"I'm a knucklehead at times … I got caught up in the rhetoric," he said.
“So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, went in, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance,” he added.
Walz taught in China in 1989 and later became a critic of its government. He has extensive ties to China, and organized an annual summer school trip to the country as a teacher in the 1990s.
The U.S. debate came as China marked the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic with President Xi Jinping addressing 120,000 people in Tiananmen Square.
Despite his positive experience teaching in China and what he described in an interview with a U.S. newspaper as its “kind, generous, capable people,” Walz is far from a dove when it comes to China’s leadership.
In 2016, he spoke out against reductions in U.S. military funding, citing “tensions rising with our trading partner, China, and the seeds of potential unrest in the Pacific.”
He has also criticized Beijing's human rights record, emphasizing the need for "dialogue" to end its human rights abuses.
Analysts have also noted that Walz, if elected vice president, would in any case have to defer on China policy to the then president, Kamala Harris, who has been in lockstep with President Joe Biden’s hawkish approach to China.
Walz said the situation required, “steady leadership from Harris, an understanding that our allies matter.”
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‘Delivered stability’
In Tuesday’s debate, comments on foreign policy focused mainly on the conflict in the Middle East.
Vance talked about the track record of his running mate, former President Donald Trump, on international relations.
“Donald Trump delivered stability in the world, he did it by establishing effective deterrence,” he said. “Donald Trump recognized that for people to fear the U.S. they needed peace through strength.”
Walz responded by criticizing Trump’s attitude to leaders such as China’s Xi, who Biden has described as a dictator.
Walz called Trump fickle, saying, “he will go to whoever has the most flattery for him,” and accusing the former president of “praising Xi Jingping about COVID,” referring to a social media post Trump made during the pandemic.
Vance talked tough on China in line with the Make America Great Again ticket he and Trump are running on.
He said a Trump/Vance administration would “penalize companies and countries that are shipping jobs overseas,” saying that under Biden and Harris, there had been “more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in the dirtiest parts of the world.”
Vance affirmed Trump’s commitment to tax imports by at least 10% in order to support domestic manufacturing and clean energy production.
“If you’re spending hundreds of millions or billions of taxpayers’ money on solar panels from China you’re making the country dirtier,” he said.
Walz responded by saying, “Donald Trump was the guy that created the largest trade deficit with China,” and he criticized Trump’s tariff plan saying if he came to power he would be, “starting a trade war he ends up losing.”
Opinion polls for the Nov. 5 election point to a close race for the White House.
No plans have been announced for another round of presidential or vice presidential debates with Donald Trump posting on his Truth Social site that "THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!" after facing off with both Biden and Harris.
Edited by RFA Staff