When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
