66th Annual Captive Nations Week Mourns Iron Fist of Global Marxism | The American Spectator

Captive Nations Week has been observed in the United States since 1959, when Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower set aside the third week of July to commemorate those under communist rule. The observance has been continued by every president since.

However, the Biden administration moved toward scrapping it prior to public outcry spearheaded by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The proclamations the administration did eventually provide neglected to mention half of the world’s communist governments.

The Foundation led its 2025 Captive Nations Week programming with its annual Captive Nations Summit, including a panel last week featuring representatives from the five remaining Marxist-Leninist states of Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, and China. 

Panelists expressed hope about the new administration and echoed the initial congressional resolution’s declaration that “[T]he enslavement of a substantial part of the world’s population by Communist imperialism makes a mockery of the idea of peaceful coexistence between nations.”

Representatives of the National Union for Democracy in Iran, the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, and the Tibetan diaspora hosted their commemoration of Captive Nations Week at the House of Representatives on July 21, which included the co-sponsorship of Cuban anti-communists.

Ben Lowsen, former United States military attache in Beijing, spoke at the event in support of the assembled captive nations to claim that America is under attack “[A]s quickly as the CCP can manage and we will allow.” Further, he claimed that  “[T]he CCP threat is in our own cities today.”

There have been instances of the operation of agents of the Chinese government, including those directly tied to the country and Americans under the spell of Marxist ideology, reported across the United States. A Department of Defense investigation earlier this year identified the presence of dozens of Chinese military companies on American soil..

In Canada, a Conservative candidate in the recent parliamentary elections was the target of a concerted campaign of harassment by Chinese communist proxies. This direct election interference was met by celebration from his Liberal opponent.

Attempting to explain the supine approach of Western leadership to this trend, Lowsen opined against a class of “captured elites.” Business and political leaders that profit from free trade agreements with China. While they turn their eyes, China and their proxies restrict American access to rare earth elements, buy American factories, and hook our most vulnerable on TikTok propaganda and deadly fentanyl.

Lowsen recounted an astounding anecdote from the harsh lockdowns imposed across China during the COVID-19 pandemic. The measures were some of the most severe in the world, echoing many regimes that used the pandemic as an excuse to impose authoritarianism. In China, drones delivered a message to remain indoors, including the ironic phrase “resist the soul’s desire for freedom.”

Salih Hudayar led representatives of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, a political committee formed to advocate for the independence of the majority ethnically Uyghur territories in Western China. They echoed with Lowsen calls for a Captive Nations Committee in Congress and calls for the banning of TikTok. Uyghurs in attendance recounted stories of family members missing and friends in camps.

Representatives of the Tibetan community shared the story of Ah Sang. An unassuming young singer, he was recently arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese government for singing a song in celebration of the birth of the Dalai Lama, his religious leader. All representatives present joined journalist and activist Se Hoon Kim to thank the administration for its extensive levying of tariffs on the People’s Republic of China, which Kim stated put China “finally on their toes.”

One audience member was former Milwaukee Alderman Tony Zielinski. For Zielinski the fight is personal and domestic, not a foreign policy issue.  In 2010, he lost a battle to prevent the city’s police uniform from being given to a Chinese company despite a lower bid from an American supplier.

Zielinski told The American Spectator of watching in vain as the factories that built his community took their jobs overseas to China. Most of his peers in politics cheered. Meanwhile, reports continued to pour in of human rights abuses.

Speaking to The American Spectator, Zielinski complained that “we’re transferring our wealth to China,” who continue to use it to oppress others. Economist David Autor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has studied this subject extensively, finding the devastation to average American communities wrought by Chinese trade run amok.

Autor found that white or black males working manufacturing jobs before 2000 who had their factories relocated to China were statistically most likely to never have another job at or above the same level of pay again. Autor warns that the damage isn’t over. 

While we moved lower-skilled manufacturing to China 20 years ago, a “China Shock 2.0” could be approaching as a more advanced Chinese industrial sector is beginning to poach high-skilled manufacturing from the United States. The ongoing tariff controversy has slowed the shock, with some jobs beginning to return to American shores.

Supporting captive nations, to Tony Zielinski, is a step in the process of bringing manufacturing jobs back home. “China is taking our money and plowing it into the military,” he noted, while “gobbling up the rare Earth minerals” essential to the modern economy.

As a billion people across the world remain under communist rule, their plight matters particularly sharply to Americans. It is our jobs and our money that have been moved by a captured elite to the regimes that propagate Marxism worldwide. To remember Captive Nations Week is to honor the depth of this crisis.