When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she does, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America for several years, having fled China due to pressure from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China now as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection 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 also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
