Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) has long promoted a Minnesota-based medical research center with a history of working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The center in Walz’s home state of Minnesota, the Hormel Institute, often collaborates on research with the WIV, the institute in Wuhan, China, at the center of the COVID-19 lab leak theory. For over a decade, Walz has held meetings with the Hormel Institute and toured the research center, which has thanked Walz for securing it millions of dollars in funding, records show.
News of the ties between the Walz-allied research center and the WIV comes as the Democratic vice presidential nominee faces a congressional investigation over his “extensive” connections to China. This year, the U.S. government halted federal funding to a nonprofit group that worked with the lab in Wuhan — where the FBI has said COVID-19 likely emerged. Walz has reportedly traveled 30 times to China, including for his honeymoon, and he said in 2016 that he does not “fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship” with the United States.
“For 80+ years, the Hormel Institute has helped pave the way for Minnesota to lead in biomedical innovation,” Walz said in April of the Minnesota group, which Fox News previously reported is linked to a Chinese military-backed company called Beijing Genomics Institute. “It was great to stop by their facilities yesterday in Austin to see that work in action.”
The Hormel Institute is based in Austin, Minnesota. In Walz’s telling, the organization “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,” according to a Hormel Institute press release.
As a congressman, Walz helped secure over $2 million for the Hormel Institute’s technology acquisitions and was a “strong advocate for The Hormel Institute, including by supporting its major expansions,” the Minnesota-based group said in April of this year. Moreover, in 2008, Walz reportedly pushed for a $5 million federal earmark for the University of Minnesota-housed group and has visited the Hormel Institute to discuss ways to increase its federal funding.
In recent years, researchers at the Hormel Institute have teamed up with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on a variety of projects, including in 2020 for a COVID-19 study and as recently as this year on structural biology research.
The COVID-19 study, titled “A dynamic regulatory interface on SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase,” was authored by four WIV researchers, three Hormel Institute researchers, and a Yale School of Medicine professor.
In 2020, the Hormel Institute also disclosed in the “funding information” section of a separate EMBO Journal study that it received “help from the Core Facility and Technical Support” of the WIV for “radioactive and fluorescent tests,” the Washington Examiner found.
Bin Liu, a professor at the Hormel Institute who is listed as working on the 2020 EMBO Journal study, attended Wuhan University, according to a copy of his resume. Other researchers for the study included those affiliated with the WIV, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China’s Zhengzhou University, federal records show.
Similarly, in January 2024, Hormel Institute researchers published a study on genes with the WIV’s Lina He, Wei Zhou, and Yangbo Hu. The WIV was used for “radioactive tests,” according to page 10 of the study.
The WIV’s Yangbo Hu worked with the Hormel Institute’s Dmytro Kompaniiets, Dong Wang, and Bin Liu on 2023 research titled “Structure and molecular mechanism of bacterial transcription activation,” among other collaborations.
Formed in 1956, the WIV is overseen by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an institution reporting directly to the Chinese Communist Party’s State Council. The WIV “has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017,” according to the State Department.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, University of Minnesota spokesman Jake Ricker insisted the school and the Hormel Institute have no “formal affiliation” with the WIV or Beijing Genomics Institute.
“Our discoveries are peer-reviewed and published in the public domain with appropriate attribution to those who contributed to each study,” Ricker said. “Research is conducted with the full commitment of the Hormel Institute and the university to compliance with federal disclosure, security, export controls, and sanctions rules.”
To Brian Cavanaugh, a former White House National Security Council member, U.S. entities should not be collaborating at all with the WIV. The Hormel Institute’s work with the WIV researchers is concerning, he said.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology has direct ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army,” Cavanaugh told the Washington Examiner. “The Hormel Institute is helping a foreign adversary.”
Meanwhile, the Hormel Institute has other China ties that have drawn scrutiny. Its former executive director, Dr. Zigang Dong, resigned in 2019 after 18 years in the role.
That’s because Dong came under FBI investigation for his “possible failure to report foreign backing when applying for grants,” the Austin Daily Herald reported.
Dong now works at China’s Zhengzhou University, where he continues to collaborate with researchers from the Hormel Institute, records show. Dong also established the China-US (Henan) Hormel Cancer Institute, a Chinese research facility partnered with the Hormel Institute, according to a 2012 press release.
“The collaboration brings more resources, it brings more collaboration in terms of what that scientific data is showing,” Walz, a then-congressman in 2012, said of the partnership.
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China’s government kept the Walz-endorsed partnership afloat with annual funding, according to an archived version of the Chinese institute’s website.
The Harris-Walz campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
