As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and delving into New York’s public library.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, 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 blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
