As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America for several years, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in China today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
