Election/Election Integrity

Walz Told Students Communism Is When ‘Everyone Is The Same And Everyone Shares’

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz campaigning in Detroit, Mich., Aug. 7, 2024. (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz used favorable language to describe Chinese communism when teaching a high school social studies class in 1991, according to an unearthed article in Nebraska’s Alliance Times-Herald.

Walz told students that, under communism, “everyone shares” and gets free food and housing from the government, according to the resurfaced newspaper piece first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. Just two years before the article was published, China’s communist government massacred pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square, with death counts ranging from several hundred to thousands, according to the BBC.

“American students need to learn the horrific truths of communism and the horrors this dangerous ideology has wrought over the past century,” American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow Michael Sobolik told the Free Beacon. “Gov. Walz should clarify his comments and share his impression of communism in 2024.” 

Sobolik said Walz exposed students to a “shockingly naïve description of the Chinese

Between 1959 and 1961, during China’s transition to communism under Mao Zedong, the country saw between 23 and 30 million excess deaths, with some unpublished Chinese materials placing the figure close to 40 million deaths, according to a 1999 research paper. Communist China also killed American soldiers during the Korean War and provided extensive support to the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

None of these details were present in Walz’s reported comments on China.

“It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares,” Walz told his students in the unearthed article, explaining what life under communism was like. Walz went on to tout how people in China received free housing, paid no taxes in the late 1970s and got 30 pounds of free food per month.

Walz first traveled to China on a teaching fellowship in 1989, shortly after the Tiananmen Square massacre, according to multiple outlets.

The Minnesota governor married his wife on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the massacre, the BBC reported. Walz’s wife later said that “he wanted to have a date he’ll always remember.”

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Aug. 16 opened a probe into Walz’s alleged ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party, according to a press release. The committee claimed that Walz had his expenses covered by the Chinese government during a 1993 trip to the country and raised concerns over his affiliation with Macau Polytechnic University, a Chinese college that says it has a “long held devotion to and love for the motherland.”

Shortly before becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Walz said that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.