Photo: Damon Wilson at the 2025 China Forum. (Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation)
At the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s 2025 China Forum in Washington, D.C., NED President and CEO Damon Wilson delivered closing keynote remarks on the enduring courage of those resisting the Chinese Communist Party’s repression, the power of solidarity among freedom advocates worldwide, and the vital role of democratic nations in standing with those who continue to fight for truth and dignity.
The forum brought together activists, scholars, and policymakers to examine the CCP’s campaign of control—and to honor those in China and beyond who continue to challenge it with faith, conscience, and conviction.
Below are Damon Wilson’s prepared remarks, delivered on October 28, 2025. They have been lightly edited for clarity and online format:
Thank you to the Victims of Communism team for convening this important gathering and for ensuring that the stories of those who have suffered under communism are never forgotten. Thank you to all who have shared your voices today—from Rushan Abbas to Grace Jin Drexel, to so many who are standing up for truth in the face of fear. You remind us that the story of China today is not just one of repression—it’s also a story of remarkable courage.
It’s an honor to close this forum on behalf of the National Endowment for Democracy, an institution that was founded forty years ago on a simple belief: that people everywhere desire—and deserve—to live in freedom.
Looking back to the Cold War, it’s easy to think the victory of freedom was inevitable. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet empire collapsed, democracy spread. But it didn’t feel inevitable at the time.
In the 1970s, America was divided and uncertain. Many believed we were in decline. Yet a generation of Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—refused to surrender moral clarity. They built alliances, invested in human dignity, and stood with those who dared to believe that freedom could prevail. They were clear-eyed about the Soviet threat and understood communist ideology.
Above all, it took the efforts of the victims of communism, the people who lived under that oppressive system, the people who knew it the best, to be the real agents of change in their societies. Behind every major shift in history were people who lived under oppression and found ways to resist—Polish shipyard workers, Czech writers, Soviet dissidents, Chinese democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square. They were victims of communism—but also the agents of its undoing. America stood with them. Not to impose our system, but to affirm a universal truth: that no regime, no ideology, no wall of fear can extinguish the human desire to be free.
Today, we face a different but equally profound challenge from the Chinese Communist Party. But I want to focus less on the nature of repression, because we know that story all too well, and more on the resilience of the human spirit within China.
At NED, my colleagues and I have met with extraordinary people who carry that spirit forward—activists in exile, journalists preserving truth, survivors of forced labor, religious leaders keeping faith alive underground. Their courage reminds me of what I’ve seen in other closed societies. When we worked with activists from Eastern Europe in the 1990s, or from the Middle East during the Arab Spring, we saw that every authoritarian system looks unshakeable—until suddenly it’s not. What cracks it open isn’t power from the outside—it’s courage from within.
That courage is alive in China today.
It’s in the students who held up blank sheets of paper during the “White Paper” protests.
It’s in the one man, Peng Lifa, who climbed the Sitong Bridge and unfurled a banner that read: “We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns.”
It’s the Uyghur women, like Rushan, fighting fiercely for their family members.
It’s in the farmers and factory workers who, even amid censorship and surveillance, find ways to demand fairness and dignity.
China Dissent Monitor has recorded nearly 1,400 acts of dissent in just the last quarter—a 45 percent rise from that same period last year. Each one represents a spark of conscience—and together, they illuminate something powerful: even in the heart of the world’s most advanced surveillance state, courage still finds a way.
At NED, we have the privilege—and the responsibility—of walking alongside those who keep that spark alive. We stand with those on the frontline of freedom. This is not abstract. It’s deeply human.
We support innovators breaking through censorship and building secure channels for truth and civic expression. We support Uyghur organizations documenting crimes against humanity and making sure those stories reach policymakers around the world. We partner with Hong Kongers who are preserving the record of their struggle for freedom. We stand with Tibetan advocates defending the right to choose their own spiritual leaders, free from Party interference, and defend their culture from erasure. We work with Chinese lawyers, labor organizers, and citizen journalists who—often at great risk—refuse to give up on their country’s future. I think of the rights-defense lawyers who led the charge and abolished China’s old “re-education through labor” system. The women who fought for property rights and won local legal reforms.
These aren’t stories of victims—they’re stories of builders. Builders of a more open, just, and democratic China. Next week, at NED’s Democracy Awards, we’ll honor some of these brave voices—Uyghur, Tibetan, and Chinese—who continue to defend faith, speech, and freedom despite the CCP’s efforts to silence them. Their stories remind us why this work matters.
And our support doesn’t stop there. Around the world, NED partners are helping civil society resist Beijing’s influence—countering censorship, defending digital freedom, and building resilience to transnational repression. We’ve helped connect activists and experts across the world who are learning together how to push back against authoritarian tactics. That’s what a global movement for democracy looks like.
Xi Jinping wants the world to believe that democracy is chaotic, that freedom is fragile, that autocracy delivers results. But history, and human nature, tell a different story. Systems built on fear always project strength—until the day they don’t. They can control speech, but not thought. They can intimidate, but not inspire. And when those systems start to crack, it’s the networks we build now—the relationships among activists, policymakers, believers, workers, and advocates—that will help freedom rise faster.
That’s why gatherings like this one matter.
They remind us that the line between freedom and tyranny doesn’t run between nations—it runs through every human heart. And it reminds us that those suffering under the CCP today are not alone. They are part of a much larger human story—one that began long before the CCP, and will outlast it.
As I stand here, I think of the courage of people like Grace Jin Drexel, who spoke earlier about her father, Pastor Ezra Jin—jailed simply for leading his congregation in prayer. Her voice is a powerful reminder: faith cannot be silenced.
So as we leave this Forum, let us take with us not just outrage—but hope. Hope rooted in the courage of those who refuse to give up, and in the knowledge that freedom’s cause is stronger when we stand together.
The day will come when the Chinese people can speak freely, worship freely, and determine their own future. And when that day arrives, they will know that we stood with them—not just in words, but in solidarity and action.
I thank each of you here for your own efforts. May we never tire of defending freedom’s cause.
