Walz brings extensive China experience to Democratic ticket (August 7, 2024)
www.nbcnews.com

... Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's history with China could be a point of contention in the presidential campaign at a time when both parties advocate being tough on Beijing. ...

Before being named Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Tim Walz's career included extensive experience with China " a relationship that drew immediate GOP criticism and became a hot topic of discussion on Chinese social media Wednesday.

The Minnesota governor's ties with the country, which stretch back to his first days out of college, have been a constant in his career.

His history with Beijing -- which increasing numbers of Americans view as an "enemy" -- could be a point of contention in the presidential campaign at a time when being tough on the rival superpower is one of the few issues both parties can agree on. ...

While Walz has been critical of the ruling Communist Party, as well as of China's trade practices and growing aggression in the South China Sea, he says there are "many areas of cooperation that we can work on."

"I don't fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship," he said in a video interview in 2016. ...

Walz, 60, first went to China after graduating from college in 1989, spending a year teaching English and American history and culture at a high school in the southern Chinese city of Foshan through Harvard's WorldTeach program.

His arrival coincided with a deadly crackdown by Chinese authorities on pro-democracy protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in the capital, Beijing, that severely strained China's international relations.

The bloody crackdown had a lasting impact on Walz, who saw it as all the more reason to go.

"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," he later said in congressional testimony. ...

Interesting background article.

'Forgotten by society' -- how Chinese migrants built the transcontinental railroad (2019)
www.theguardian.com

... When one thinks of the transcontinental railroad, rarely do Chinese migrants come to mind. But in a new exhibition at the National Museum of American History in Washington, a vital revision is presented.

Until spring 2020 ...

Forgotten Workers: Chinese Migrants and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad peels back the layers to see who else should be commemorated during the recent 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad's completion -- an achievement which has typically been celebrated with photos of old locomotives, successful-looking men in suits and anonymous workers hammering away.

But this exhibition takes a different tack, tracing the forgotten Chinese workers who built the western leg of the railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains, connecting the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad in 1869.

"Historians have always known and written about the Chinese workers, but it's forgotten by society," said Peter Liebhold, who co-curated the exhibit with Sam Vong. "We've forgotten the contribution of these workers, and in fact, we forget the contribution of all workers. We tend to focus on the achievement of the few and not the stories of the average everyday person." ...