When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions 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”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “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 investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “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
