When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. In 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 New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
However since the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
