FIRST ON FOX: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been a longtime vocal supporter of a medical research institute in his home state with a long track record of collaborating with a firm labeled by the Pentagon as a “Chinese military company” and with Chinese officials with controversial ties to the CCP.
Walz, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, has long been aligned with the Hormel Institute, a biomedical research center in Austin, Minnesota, within the University of Minnesota’s Research and Innovation Office. As recently as April, a press release from the institute highlighted how Walz went to “meet with local leaders and learn of the Institute’s recent progress in groundbreaking biomedical and agricultural research and its expanding education and outreach initiatives.”
“[The Hormel Institute] is no longer a secret, and we don’t want it to be a secret – it’s very un-Minnesotan of us because we’re bragging all the time,” Walz said in the press release. “I think it [the vision of MBiC] fits with where we see ourselves as a state [in the future]… a future around… green energy, sustainable agriculture, and the ability to feed a very hungry world… and the ability to be one of the nation’s designated biotech hubs.”
The Hormel Institute has done extensive work with the Beijing Genomics Institute, a group labeled by the Pentagon as a “Chinese military company,” some of which involved research on BGI machines and studies conducted with BGI laboratories in Shenzhen, China, for analysis.
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Gov. Tim Walz has a long history of promoting a medical research outfit tied to the CCP. (Getty Images)
“BGI may be serving, wittingly or unwittingly, as a global collection mechanism for Chinese government gene databases, providing China with greater raw numbers and diversity of human genome samples as well as access to sensitive personal information about key individuals around the world,” The National Security Commission on AI said in 2022.
Concerns about BGI are so prevalent that Congress has weighed legislation to ban government contracts with the Chinese military subsidiary, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Beyond the extensive ties to BGI, the former executive director of the Hormel Institute, and the timing of his 2019 resignation, has drawn controversy in its own right.
Dr. Zigang Dong abruptly stepped down from his post leading the institute in 2019 after 18 years in the position. Around the same time, it was revealed Dong was involved in an FBI probe where the bureau was investigating his “possible failure to report foreign backing when applying for grants,” Austin Daily Herald reported.
In addition to serving as the executive director of the Hormel Institute, Dong established the China-US (Henan) Hormel Cancer Institute (CUHCI), a multimillion-dollar international partnership with a research facility in China, during his time with Hormel, and Walz was present to celebrate the announcement.
“The collaboration brings more resources, it brings more collaboration in terms of what that scientific data is showing,” Walz, then a congressman representing Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, said about the partnership.
“A sum of money is budgeted by the Henan Provincial Government to the institute annually to maintain its regular operation,” the partnership explained.
In 2014, Walz welcomed a delegation from China to the institute that included Wang Yanling, the vice governor of Henan Province and a Communist Party doctor. Yanling is listed as holding several positions in the Chinese Communist Party over the course of many decades.
Several members of the Chinese Communist Party have sat on the board of directors at the Henan Cancer Institute, according to an archived version of the organization’s website.
Despite stepping down from the executive director role, Dong’s ties to the China‐US (Henan) Hormel Cancer Institute in Zhengzhou have continued since he stepped down in 2019. In 2022, the Henan institute published a study with Dong and several other individuals that involved genetic sequencing provided by BGI.
In January 2024, Professor Ann M. Bode from the Hormel Institute in Minnesota collaborated with several scientists based in China to conduct research that included experiments carried out using BGI machines.
A review of the Minnesota Hormel Institute’s faculty list shows five professors who were educated in China, including genetics experts who specialize in “gene regulation.”
FEC filings show that Dong has been a longtime and almost exclusive donor to Walz’s political career, including five donations of over $200 to Walz’s congressional campaigns dating back to 2005.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug. 21, 2024. (Reuters/Mike Segar)
As a member of Congress, Walz backed Hormel’s expansion and helped them secure “over $2M for technology acquisitions,” according to a press release.
In 2008, when Walz was touring the Hormel Institute, the Rochester Post Bulletin reported he “will keep pushing for the institute to receive a $5 million federal earmark in 2009 to help pay for equipment and instruments in its new International Center of Research Technology. The center could cost as much as $10 million, with additional costs of staff, other instruments and possibly more space.”
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attends a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Aug. 6, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Dong praised Walz’s efforts to secure funding for the group, including his push to send over $300,000 to the institute in 2009.
“We are deeply indebted to Congressman Walz and the diligent, dedicated effort he makes to secure funding support for the Hormel Institute,” Dong said, according to the Post Bulletin.
“The growth we have achieved – and the future growth we will continue to strive for – depends on the important partnerships we share with our community and the support we receive from our leaders, such as Congressman Walz.”
In addition to Walz, two of his top congressional aides visited the Hormel Institute in 2016 to “discuss areas where congressional support could be helpful, such as increasing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget to increase cancer grant funding.”
Tim Bertocci, who served as Walz’s legislative director, among other roles, started working at the Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict earlier this year, according to his Linkedin profile. Sara Severs, who was Walz’s deputy chief of staff at the time, works for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
“They toured the expansion and learned about the CryoElectron microscope and lab newly added to the International Center of Research Technology,” the Facebook post continued. “Rep. Walz’s efforts secured nearly $2 million in technology grants for items such as a supercomputer and mass spectrometry for cancer research.”
Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, warned in his recent book “Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance,” that the CCP is actively involved in subverting U.S. foreign policy through cancer research centers.
“America, by virtue of its power and ideology, stands athwart authoritarianism and imperialism, oftentimes without Americans realizing it,” Sobolik wrote.
“Whether we know it or not, we are once again living in a cold war. I still remember the day this reality mugged me in 2018, when the president of an internationally recognized cancer research center visited the Senate and warned me that the CCP was stealing advanced radiology research from their institution. Beijing’s intent was not to cure cancer but to examine the possibility of immunizing their population against radiation poisoning in a nuclear war.”
Sobolik told Fox News Digital that while Americans “want to use science to cure cancer,” the “Chinese Community Party wants to leverage that research to win a nuclear war.”
China’s President Xi Jinping during a visit to Rome on March 23, 2019, as part of a two-day visit to Italy. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images)
“That’s terrifying – and it’s been an open secret in medical research centers throughout America for over five years. Even if Tim Walz didn’t know that, he should have noted the FBI’s investigation into Dong. It has the hallmarks of the CCP’s Thousand Talents Program, which Beijing leverages to steal and repurpose dual-use research for military purposes. Walz’s continued support for the Hormel Institute raises questions about his judgment on critical national security issues.”
Dong appears to be linked with the CCP’s “Talents Plan” or “Thousand Talents Plan,” which it describes as an effort by China to “incentivize its members to steal foreign technologies needed to advance China’s national, military, and economic goals.”
In 2018, a company known as ThermoFisher, which Human Rights Watch accused of supplying the Chinese government with surveillance tech to crack down on the Uyghur population, sponsored a conference in Beijing titled “Transforming lives through pioneering Precision Medicine.”
One of the panels at that conference, called “Looking Toward a World Without Cancer,” was hosted by Professor Liu Yuanli, who is openly associated with the “Thousand Talents” program.
Also sitting on that panel was Dong.
Dong was selected by “100 Top Talents Projects” in China, according to a 2014 press release.
“Someday when they write the history of how humanity solved cancer, it will be written through Henan Province and through Austin, Minnesota,” Walz is quoted as saying.
The ties to the Hormel Institute exist under the backdrop of increased scrutiny in recent weeks of Walz’s affinity toward China and past associations with its communist regime.
Walz worked briefly in China as a teacher, traveling to Guangdong in 1989 for a teach abroad program to teach English and American history. Walz has made dozens of trips to China and The Wall Street Journal, citing local media reports, reported that one trip to China doubled as his honeymoon in 1994, and he planned his wedding date to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
“I’ve lived in China and, as I’ve said, I’ve been there about 30 times…. I don’t fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship. I totally disagree, and I think we need to stand firm on what they’re doing in the South China Sea, but there’s many areas of cooperation we can work on,” Walz said in an interview with Agri-Pulse Communications.
He was also quoted by a local outlet in 1990 reflecting on his visits to China, saying, “No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz celebrate during the final day of the Democratic National Convention. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“They gave me more gifts than I could bring home. It was an excellent experience,” Walz said, adding that he was “treated exceptionally well.”
The remark came in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and amid continued and still ongoing mass human rights abuses in the communist regime.
“Tim Walz owes the American people an explanation about his unusual, 35-year relationship with Communist China,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posted on X in early August.
Fox News Digital reported earlier this month that the House Oversight Committee was probing Walz’s ties to China, including his alleged “longstanding connections” to China and CCP-linked entities.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the Hormel Institute in Minnesota said the Hormel Cancer institute in China and the Hormel Institute in Minnesota are no longer affiliated.
“The University of Minnesota and the Hormel Institute in Minnesota have no affiliation with China-US (Henan) Hormel Cancer Institute in China,” the statement said. “Cease and desist letters have been sent to the institute in China requesting it to stop using the Hormel name.”
“The Hormel Institute and the University are committed to compliance with federal disclosure, security, export controls and sanctions rules.”
The spokesperson added, “Many of our elected leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have supported and continue to support the Hormel Institute and its mission. State and federal leaders from both parties visit Austin regularly to meet with our researchers and learn more about our life-saving biomedical and cancer research.”
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about when the disassociation took place or about Hormel’s connections to BGI.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report.