When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
But in the year after the president was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China now as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
