Video credit: Vice President Debate from CBS News.

This story first appeared on the NPR Network Live blog of the 2024 vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. You can find the latest on the campaign here: Go to NPR’s election page.

Gov. Tim Walz was questioned by vice presidential debate moderators on Tuesday about his previous trips to China following disagreements over how often he visited China and whether he was there during the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Walz has a long relationship with China and claimed he had been there “about 30” or “dozens” of times, but after APM Reports questioned how that was possible, his campaign acknowledged that the actual number of trips by the US to China “closer to 15.”

Walz lived in China for about a year, teaching in the southern city of Foshan. His work at the nonprofit WorldTeach began in the summer of 1989, just two months after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Beginning in 1993, he led annual summer trips to China for students from the high schools in Nebraska and Minnesota where he taught.

Walz also once described his stay in Hong Kong in May 1989, during the student uprising that culminated in the Tiananmen Square massacre, according to reporting by APM reports Notes – a claim refuted by newspaper reports at the time.

“I got there that summer and made a mistake,” he said.

When asked about this discrepancy, Walz told the moderators, “I’m a dick sometimes.”