When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But in the year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
