When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US 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 president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
However since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. The deals have made some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
