When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping China because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in China today as well,” she said, 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 legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
