When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in the US for several years, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
