As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of force.
But after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “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 investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
