As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in America for several years, having fled China because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing 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 purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
