When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
But over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to events in China decades past.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions early on 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 presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “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 investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
