As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of force.
However since the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of 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, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
