As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not only thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the year since the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
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 recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
