When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year since the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to events in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
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 this year, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
