When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He resided in America since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in China now as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
