When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she is not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material where I openly disparage the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash originated from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to America for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America 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 more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
