As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share material where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
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 the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism 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 the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, something that is impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
