When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not just thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line 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 comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
