As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content where I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year since the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in America for several years, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, 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 developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain 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 demanded they only report on approved news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
