When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
However over the past year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US for several years, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have made some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
