Tim Walz (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz "was so proud of his extensive experience" traveling to China that he "occasionally used to exaggerate it" by claiming to have visited the communist country twice as often as he actually did, Minnesota Public Radio reported on Monday.
Walz went on around 15 trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s—rather than over 30, as he stated earlier in his political career—his campaign told Minnesota Public Radio this week.
The news comes as the House Oversight Committee has been investigating Walz's travel to China and whether he was the target of foreign influence operations. Walz first visited China on a year-long teaching fellowship in 1989. After he returned to the United States, he set up a travel company to take American students on tours of China.
Walz claimed in a 2016 interview to have traveled to the communist country "about 30 times" and said during congressional hearings that he visited "dozens of times."
But Minnesota Public Radio's APM Reports said that Walz "sometimes exaggerated his already substantial experience in China."
"APM Reports asked the campaign for documentation on the additional trips, and after weeks of searching, a spokesman finally acknowledged that Walz had traveled from the United States to China 'closer to 15 times,'" the news outlet reported on Monday.
The report comes as the Minnesota governor has faced scrutiny for misrepresenting his military service and other parts of his résumé. Walz, who also served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, claimed for years that he was a "retired command sergeant major," despite retiring at a lower rank, and falsely suggested that he had served in combat.
Walz also said he was in the process of getting his doctorate degree at St. Mary's University years after he left the program, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Walz's views on China have been a subject of controversy during the campaign. As a high school teacher in the 1990s, Walz appeared to extol life under Chinese communism, telling his students that it is a system in which "everyone shares" and gets free food and housing, the Free Beacon reported in August.
"It means that everyone is the same and everyone shares," Walz said during a lesson on China's communist system in November 1991. "The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg or about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing."
After returning from his first trip to China, Walz told a local newspaper, "No matter how long I live, I'll never be treated that well again."
"They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience," he said, boasting that he received a salary that was double the pay of Chinese teachers, was given a decorated apartment with a color TV, and had the only air-conditioned residence on campus.
Walz and his wife Gwen also got married on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with Gwen Walz saying her husband "wanted to have a date he'll always remember."
Tim Walz, who advocates for hiking corporate taxes, had his China travel company shut down in 1998 by the Nebraska government for failing to pay a minor business operating tax, the Free Beacon reported last month.
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