When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize the government … I think this is a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled 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 a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
