As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share material where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in America for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain 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 overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
