When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders 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, in the current administration, it seems as if America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the state, but such 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,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer a god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
