As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in the East today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “America isn't a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, 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, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
