华盛顿 — 在副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯提名明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔茨作为竞选伙伴之前35年，1989年天安门广场事件爆发前的一段时间，他前往中国大陆执教高中教师的岗位。在2014年的国会听证会上回顾25年前那场屠杀，他说他在事件发生之际进入中国香港。回忆起当时在香港机场看到一群人群愤怒的情景，沃尔茨说我们依然去那里是不合时宜的。然而，在年轻时期就对中国有着深厚兴趣的他，看到了一个机遇，“当时的我认为，外交谈判将在多个层面上进行，特别是通过人们之间的交流，因此在那个关键时刻在中国一所高中任教似乎极为重要。”
面对对他在抵达中国时间上的质疑以及更正记录后表示自己误说了的情况（实际到达香港是在1989年8月之后），沃尔茨现在公开指出。他曾经向《希尔》杂志表示：“中国的影响力正在提升，这就是我决定前往的原因。”
他的这一年的经历——在美国历史、文化及英语方面在广东省佛山市教书，开启了与中国的长达数十年的关系，并因此遭受了共和党的批评。他们试图将这位被视为对中国共产党统治下国家持弱化政策态度的候选人刻画为美国最大的地缘政治威胁和经济对手之一。
来自阿肯色州的国会议员汤姆·库恩（Tom Cotton）认为沃尔茨需要向公众说明他与中国的“不寻常”关系。前川普政府时期的外交部发言人莫根·奥塔古斯（Morgan Ortagus）宣称，如果沃尔茨的政策成为主导，“我们的中国政策将退化为数十年来最弱的一次。”然而，沃尔茨的政治生涯中一直批判中国政府尤其是其人权记录。
在返回内布拉斯加州后，他说如果中国公民有正确的领导层，“他们可以实现无限制的目标。”到2016年时，他访问中国的次数估计约为30次，包括与妻子盖恩（Gwen）的蜜月旅行。两人于1994年6月4日结为夫妇，这天正好是中国残酷镇压天安门广场抗议活动五周年的纪念日。“我希望这是一个他永远铭记的日子。”她向《希尔》杂志表示，在婚礼前。
在两人的蜜月期间，他们带领数十名美国学生在中国旅行。两人通过自己的旅行社继续组织此类教育之旅多年。2006年当选国会议员后，沃尔茨担任跨党派国会-行政部门中国委员会的成员，关注人权问题。他支持香港民主运动，获得活动人士杰弗里·诺（Jeffrey Ngo）的赞赏。
在2017年的众议院听证会上，他是唯一签署《香港人权与民主法案》的人，并最终在2019年通过该法案。沃尔茨曾与西藏流亡领袖达赖喇嘛会面，并对中国在南海的侵略行为表示批评。
2016年接受采访时，他说与中国的关系不必成为对立状态，“我们之间有很多合作领域”。但同样强调，这种关系取决于中国遵守规则。他称中国的“人权状况正在恶化而不是好转”，并且建议不应将中国的人权问题与贸易政策割裂开。他说：“我们认为，在自由市场经济下，我们会看到中国对社会生活和人权的开放程度，但这并未发生。”在众议院听证会上，他认为，“经济成长不能脱离人权的进步，作为一个国家，我们需要提升这些理念。”
副总统辩论结束后，沃尔茨告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，“我在理解中国方面远比唐纳德·特朗普更深入。”“习近平并不是一个人你应该仰视的”。
新闻来源：www.cbsnews.com
原文地址：Tim Walz’s long history with China
新闻日期：2024-08-09
原文摘要：
Washington — Thirty-five years before Vice President Kamala Harris named Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, he was on his way to teach high school in mainland China after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square took place in 1989. Walz said at a 2014 congressional hearing marking 25 years since the massacre that he entered China "as the events were unfolding." He recalled meeting a crowd of people in a Hong Kong train station who were "very angry that we would still go after what had happened." But Walz, who became fascinated with China during his youth, saw it as an opportunity. "It was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels, certainly people to people, and the opportunity to be in a Chinese high school at that critical time seemed to me to be really important," Walz said. Facing scrutiny over his timeline about when he first traveled to China, Walz has now corrected the record, saying he misspoke and he didn't arrive in Hong Kong until August of 1989, months after the crackdown. In 2007, as a newly elected congressman, he told The Hill that "China was coming, and that's the reason that I went." His year teaching U.S. history, culture and English in Foshan, a city in the southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong, was the beginning of his decades-long relationship with China. It has opened him up to criticism from Republicans, who are trying to portray him as being weak on the communist-ruled nation, which is widely viewed as the greatest geopolitical threat and economic rival to the U.S.Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said Walz owes Americans "an explanation about his unusual" relationship with China. Morgan Ortagus, who was a Trump-era State Department spokesperson, claimed that "if Walz has his way, our China policy will be the weakest in generations." But Walz has spent his political career criticizing the Chinese government, especially its human rights record. After Walz returned to Nebraska following his year teaching abroad, he told the Star-Herald that if Chinese citizens "had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish." As of 2016, Walz said he had visited China about 30 times, including for his honeymoon. Walz married his wife, Gwen, a fellow teacher, on June 4, 1994 — the fifth anniversary of China's brutal repression of Tiananmen Square protests. "He wanted to have a date he'll always remember," she told the Star-Herald before they wed. For their honeymoon, the couple led dozens of American students on a tour through China. The couple continued the educational trips for years through their own travel company. Elected to Congress in 2006, Walz served on the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which focuses on human rights. He backed Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, garnering praise from activist Jeffrey Ngo. In 2017, he was the only lawmaker to co-sponsor the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which eventually passed in 2019. Walz has met with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled leader, and has been critical of China's aggression in the South China Sea. In a 2016 interview, Walz said he didn't "fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship," and said there could be "many areas of cooperation" between the U.S. and China. But he also said the relationship depends on China playing "by the rules." That same year, Walz said China's human rights record was "getting worse, not better." He suggested that separating China's human rights record from trade policies, which he previously supported, was a mistake. "I think the idea was, with a free-market economy, we would see a more opening of the Chinese grip on social life and on human rights. That simply has not occurred," Walz said during a House hearing. "We cannot decouple economic growth from human rights growth, and, as a nation, we need to hold those ideas up." After the vice presidential debate, Walz told CBS News he understands China "a hell of a lot better than Donald Trump." "Xi Jinping is not someone you should look up to," he said.
