Tim Walz Said He Was in Hong Kong in 1989 During Tiananmen. Not True.; The New York Times; October 1, 2024

Danny Hakim and Amy Qin , The New York Times; Tim Walz Said He Was in Hong Kong in 1989 During Tiananmen. Not True.

"Repeatedly over the years, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has said that the year he spent teaching in China began with a trip to Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests in the spring of 1989 that culminated in the deadly crackdown that June in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

As recently as February, Mr. Walz said on a podcast that he had been in Hong Kong, then a British colony, “on June 4 when Tiananmen happened,” and decided to cross into mainland China to take up his teaching duties even though many people were urging him not to.

Mr. Walz had told the same story a decade earlier, at a congressional hearing, when he testified that he “was in Hong Kong in May 1989,” adding, “As the events were unfolding, several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.”

But it was not true. Mr. Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, indeed taught at a high school in China as part of a program sending American teachers abroad, but he did not actually travel to the country until August 1989."