As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not only thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content where I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if America is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China today as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
