As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
However in the year after Donald Trump 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'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, 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 organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in America for several years, having fled China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“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, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign 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 China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
