As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s public library.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China 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 societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though without equivalent degrees of force.
However after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America since 2019, having fled the country because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China today as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
