When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of force.
However since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US for several years, having fled China due to pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who 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 attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
