When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East now as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
