As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes the stage in New York, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
However after the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in China today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges 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. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
