“As a high school teacher in the 1990s, Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz appeared to extol life under Chinese communism, telling his students that it is a system in which ‘everyone shares’ and gets free food and housing,” reports the Washington Free Beacon.
That was an odd thing to say about communist China, which had recently massacred many people in Tiananmen Square. At least 40 million people died in a famine caused by China’s communist government in 1958-60, a famine ironically known as the “Great Leap Forward.” The Great Leap Forward was filled with violent oppression that increased the suffering of China’s people, and denied food to millions of starving people, according to Wikipedia:
Villagers were unable to secure enough food to go on living because they were deprived by the commune system of their traditional means of being able to rent, sell, or use their land as collateral for loans. In one village, once the commune was operational the Party boss and his colleagues “swung into manic action, herding villagers into the fields to sleep and to work intolerable hours, and forcing them to walk, starving, to distant additional projects”…. Failure to participate in the CCP’s political campaigns…could result in detention, torture, death, and the suffering of entire families”. Public criticism sessions were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials; they increased the death rate of the famine in several ways, according to Thaxton. “In the first case, blows to the body caused internal injuries that, in combination with physical emaciation and acute hunger, could induce death.”… beatings with sticks was the most common method used by local cadres and roughly half of all cadres regularly pummeled or caned people. Other cadres devised harsher means to humiliate and torture those who failed to keep up. As mass starvation set in, ever greater violence had to be inflicted in order to coerce malnourished people to labor in the fields. Victims were buried alive, thrown bound into ponds, stripped naked and forced to labor in the middle of winter, doused in boiling water, forced to ingest excrement and urine, and subjected to mutilation (hair ripped out, noses and ears lopped off)….Around 6 to 8% of those who died during the Great Leap Forward were tortured to death or summarily killed….”communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quota.”
Millions of Chinese peasants were kicked out of communal canteens and denied any food, ensuring that they would starve to death, even as communist officials and others were allowed to continue eating and thus avoided death.
Walz, however, falsely depicted communism as treating everyone “the same” and sharing resources equitably, reports the Free Beacon:
“It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares,” Walz said during a lesson on China’s communist system in November 1991. “The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg or about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing.”…At the time, Walz was teaching social studies at a Nebraska high school….Michael Sobolik, a China expert and the author of Countering China’s Great Game, said Walz’s comments to students were a “shockingly naïve description of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.” “American students need to learn the horrific truths of communism and the horrors this dangerous ideology has wrought over the past century,” said Sobolik….Walz’s rosy description of communism in China is similar to his recent controversial remark that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” It also reflects his longstanding ties to the country.
The candidate “always has been fascinated by Communist China,” according to a profile about him published in Nebraska’s Star-Herald in 1994. As a child, he recalled seeing “pictures of Mao Tse-tung, hung in public places and carried in parades,” the paper reported.
Walz first traveled to China on a year-long teaching fellowship in 1989, months after the Chinese Communist Party slaughtered thousands of pro-democracy activists and student protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Despite the country’s turmoil, Walz …wrote … that he was “being treated like a king” in China. In China, Walz said he received a salary that was double the pay of Chinese teachers, was given a decorated apartment with a color TV, and had the only air-conditioned residence on campus….”No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” he told the Times-Herald… “They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience.”…
After returning to the United States in the early 1990s, Walz started leading trips to China for American high school students, with support from the Chinese government. The trips were “arranged by a friend of Walz in China’s foreign affairs department,” the Star-Herald reported at the time…Walz and his wife Gwen held their wedding on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre—with Gwen Walz saying her husband “wanted to have a date he’ll always remember.” The Walzes spent their honeymoon in China….Tim Walz maintained public ties to Chinese educational institutes until at least 2007, when he was elected to Congress.
When Tim Walz was governor of Minnesota, his administration turned a blind eye to a blatantly obvious $250 million fraud scheme that fleeced taxpayers.
Walz helped create an atmosphere of lawlessness in Minneapolis by refusing to deploy the National Guard for days in response to deadly riots, even after the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis begged him to send in the National Guard to end the rioting. Mayor Jacob Frey described how “Gov. Tim Walz failed to take his requests for help seriously until it was too late….Frey said that Walz hesitated to send in the National Guard to quell the growing violence and then blamed him for allowing the city to burn.” The riots caused more than $500 million in damage in Minneapolis and St. Paul and “burned over 1,000 businesses and a police station to the ground.”
Walz has “a terrible record as governor. Under Walz, Minnesota became a high-crime state for the first time ever. Under Walz, student achievement tumbled even as spending on schools skyrocketed. Under Walz, per capita GDP in Minnesota fell below the national average, for the first time ever. Under Walz, increases in energy costs have far outstripped the national average,” notes the head of a Minnesota think-tank.
Walz raised taxes in Minnesota even as taxes fell in neighboring states. Walz sought tax increases even when the state was anticipated to have a $17.5 billion budget surplus, spending all of the $17.5 surplus and trying to raise taxes yet again. Walz dramatically increased government spending in Minnesota, and ran up one of the worst fiscal records in America. “I gave Tim Walz an ‘F’ on the 2022 Cato Governors Report Card. Big taxer and spender,” says economist Chris Edwards.
As Erick Erickson observes, “Tim Walz refused to add state police resources to quell progressive rioters. He closed churches during COVID and reopened bars but refused to reopen churches. He taxes retiree social security income. He attempted an income tax hike during COVID. He kept kids locked out of public schools. Under Walz, the murder rate in Minnesota jumped over 50%.”
Carjackings in Minnesota jumped by 548% in Minneapolis under Tim Walz, reports Newsweek. The increase was due in large part to left-wing policies backed by Tim Walz.
Minnesota’s high taxes and growing number of restrictions on residents under Walz have driven thousands of residents to other states, like Florida, that have lower taxes and less red tape. Minnesota has lost more residents to Florida than any other state.
