When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though without equivalent degrees of force.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
