As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … 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,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have made some investors concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
