When Kamala Harris surprised the nation and chose Tim Walz as her running mate, the public reaction was swift: Who?
 
Seventy one percent of Americans reported they had never heard of the former Congressman and current Minnesota governor.
 
But at least one nation in the world knows Walz well — the People’s Republic of China. Breitbart News is just one of many sources digging past the superficial profiles of Walz and asking key questions — seven in all — about his unusual relationship with China and its ruling Communist Party.
 
The questions are vital to evaluating his proposed express lane from obscurity to the second highest office in the land.
 
Remember this? Within minutes of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sanctioned former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with 27 other Trump officials, for their frank assessment of the Chinese threat. The CCP banned Pompeo and the others from any travel to or other dealings with China. 
 
All this reminded me of some personal conversations with Secretary Pompeo and a series of speeches he gave in 2020 that spurred the CCP’s hostility. In remarks to the National Governors Association, he pointed out that a government-backed research institute in Beijing had compiled a list ranking every U.S. governor on their friendliness toward Chinese interests.
 
The list, which reportedly includes members of Congress, state legislators, and mayors (Beijing likes to be comprehensive) has never been released. The explanation is likely an ordinary one for our national politics — it would include and embarrass both Democrats and Republicans who have been all too willing to suck up to Beijing.
 
It would be a shock if the list told us anything different about Walz. His and his wife’s lifelong affinity for China began in 1989 when he taught in China for a year. In 1994 he formed a travel agency in Minnesota called Educational Travel Adventures. The agency brought groups of U.S. students to China for visits. Reports say the Chinese government largely paid for these visits. Their aim, no doubt, was to fill the young people’s heads with gauzy ideas about the CCP’s one-party vision.
 
In 1994 Walz and his wife spent their honeymoon in China, deliberately selecting the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre because, as a fellow teacher told MSN, they wanted a date they would remember. All in all, Walz has made 30 visits to the communist country. He has forged relationships close enough that several CCP officials attended his second inauguration in 2023.
 
Those Chinese officials, and others from Beijing’s Ministry for State Security, are not in the United States to take pictures of Mt. Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. In seven states, including Minnesota and its Twin Cities, they are here to manage Chinese police stations to monitor and harass Chinese dissidents living in our country.
 
These operations are so menacing to America that even the Biden Justice Department shut down an illegal Chinese police bureau in Manhattan, charging two of its principals with violations of U.S. law.
 
Scoffers in the “mainstream media” will mock the notion of communists hiding under our beds. But we need to examine what’s in plain sight. China’s agents in America engage in massive spying operations. They seek to buy up high-value U.S. land, sometimes using U.S. public officials to mitigate opposition.
 
China crushed democracy in Hong Kong and denies human rights and basic freedoms to the Uighur population, Tibetans, and other disfavored groups.
 
China’s fast-growing military conducts operations of intimidation not only against Taiwan but democratic allies of ours anywhere on its perimeter, including Japan, Guam, and the Philippines.
 
At the very least, our government should step up and release Beijing’s assessment of who among our leaders is a best friend to them. Share the list. Then a debate must happen, and swiftly, about whether our leaders will kowtow to the CCP or serve the freedom and security of the American people first. 
 
We have 85 days to find out.