As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
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.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. These moves have made some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
