When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share material where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
However after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
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 has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China now as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
