As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content where I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
