As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi 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 governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
