When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out 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 equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved news. US courts have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
