Tim Walz has long promoted a medical research lab in Minnesota with ties to the Chinese military, Fox News reported.

The University of Minnesota's Hormel Institute, a biomedical research facility in Austin, Minnesota, has extensive ties to China and its largest genomics company, the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI).

In bed with China

Researchers at the Hormel Institute have collaborated with Chinese researchers using BGI's machines as recently as January, Fox reported, despite the company's alleged collection of Americans' genome data. Both parties in Congress have pushed to ban BGI, which the Pentagon considers a "Chinese military company."

Since being named Kamala Harris' running mate, Tim Walz has raised eyebrows for his apparent fondness for communist China, which he has visited some 30 times. He also married his wife on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

As a congressman, Walz cheered a new partnership between the Hormel Institute and a research lab in Henan, China, China-US (Henan) Hormel Cancer Institute (CUHCI).

"The collaboration brings more resources, it brings more collaboration in terms of what that scientific data is showing," Walz said.

The lab director who set up the partnership, Dr. Zigang Dong, resigned from Hormel Institue in 2019 while under an FBI investigation for failing to report foreign backing, Fox reported.

During his tenure, Dong praised Walz for his role in steering millions in U.S. tax dollars to expand Hormel's research.

"We are deeply indebted to Congressman Walz and the diligent, dedicated effort he makes to secure funding support for the Hormel Institute," Dong said.

Walz's China ties grow

It's an open secret that Beijing exploits American medical research for military purposes, Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, said.

"Even if Tim Walz didn’t know that, he should have noted the FBI’s investigation into Dong," Sobolik told Fox News Digital.

"It has the hallmarks of the CCP’s Thousand Talents Program, which Beijing leverages to steal and repurpose dual-use research for military purposes."

As recently as April, Walz visited the Hormel Institute and bragged that it is no longer a "secret."

"[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 a press release.