When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, find disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in China today as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once vocal on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
