When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I would never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
However over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. 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 brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America since 2019, having fled China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
