GOP Senators Move to Build Communism Memorial on China's Doorstep in Washington

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A Memorial Facing the Embassy Gates

Senators Rick Scott of Florida and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced new legislation this week called the Honoring the Victims of Communist China's Tyranny Act. According to the bill, formally numbered S.5044 in the 119th Congress, would require the Secretary of State to establish a memorial honoring victims of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Communist Party and others persecuted in the People's Republic of China. The bill was introduced on July 21, 2026, and referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The chosen location is no coincidence. The memorial would rise in International Park, a public green space that sits directly across from the Chinese Embassy compound in northwest Washington. Every Chinese diplomat entering the building would pass it on the way to work.

Scott made the intent explicit, saying Chinese officials should be forced to confront the party's record of abuses each time they walk into the embassy. Blackburn added that the CCP bears responsibility for some of the most severe human rights violations of the modern era, including forced labor, religious persecution, and forced sterilization.

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Who the Memorial Would Honor

The proposed memorial would not focus on a single event. Instead, it is designed to span nearly the entire history of Communist rule in China — from Mao Zedong's era, when policies such as the Great Leap Forward are estimated by historians to have caused tens of millions of deaths through famine and political violence, through the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, and up to the present-day persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, which the U.S. government has formally designated a genocide.

The legislation also calls for the memorial to document Beijing's suppression of Tibetan and Southern Mongolian language, religion, and culture, as well as the imprisonment of journalists, religious leaders, and pro-democracy advocates. One case senators pointed to repeatedly is that of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher and Apple Daily founder. Lai, now 78, was sentenced in February 2026 to a total of 20 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and publishing seditious material — a case Reuters described as ending Hong Kong's biggest national security prosecution and fueling global concern over Beijing's clampdown on freedoms in the former British colony. The sentence was the harshest yet handed down under Hong Kong's national security law, surpassing the previous record of ten years given to legal scholar Benny Tai in 2024, and international rights groups have criticized it as excessively severe given Lai's age and health.

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Funding and Design

Under the bill's terms, the memorial would need to be completed within a set timeframe after passage and would include inscriptions, artwork, or other educational material describing the abuses outlined above. Public funding for the project would be capped at $500,000, with the remainder to be covered through private donations — a structure meant to keep the financial burden on taxpayers minimal while still allowing the memorial to be built to a meaningful scale.

The bill also directs that the memorial express solidarity between the American and Chinese peoples, distinguishing the CCP's actions from the population it governs, and voice hope that the Chinese people will one day enjoy full civil liberties.

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Political Backdrop

The timing of the announcement is notable. It follows public comments from left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, who has previously described Mao Zedong in favorable terms despite the scale of deaths linked to his policies. Piker, who commands a large social media following, has also campaigned alongside progressive Democratic candidates this election cycle. Scott singled out those comments directly, framing them as evidence of a broader ideological drift within parts of the Democratic base — a claim that reflects the senators' own political framing rather than an independently verified assessment of the party as a whole.

This is not the first time Scott has targeted the CCP's diplomatic presence in Washington through legislation. He previously led a bill to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy "Tiananmen Square Memorial Boulevard" to mark the anniversary of the 1989 massacre, and separately introduced legislation to establish an annual Anti-Communism Week, building on a 2025 presidential proclamation on the same theme.

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Outlook

The bill has been referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it will need to clear committee review before any floor vote. Given the current makeup of Congress, its prospects will depend heavily on bipartisan appetite for China-related legislation — an area that has, in recent years, drawn support from both parties even amid sharp disagreement on other issues. Human rights advocates for Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kong dissidents are likely to watch the bill's progress closely, since a permanent memorial of this kind would mark one of the most visible physical commemorations of CCP-era abuses on U.S. soil.

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Sources:

1. https://www.congress.gov/member/marsha-blackburn/B001243 (S.5044, 119th Congress, Congress.gov)
2. https://www.reuters.com — Reuters coverage of Jimmy Lai's February 2026 sentencing
3. https://www.rickscott.senate.gov/2026/6/sen-rick-scott-rep-andy-ogles-introduce-bill-to-honor-the-37th-anniversary-of-the-tiananmen-square-massacre (Sen. Rick Scott official press release)
4. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/hong-kong-media-mogul-jimmy-lai-faces-sentencing-in-national-security-trial

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