When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not only thinking about what humor to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
But over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events 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 of his term, many in China see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in America for several years, after escaping China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America isn't a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
