When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year after the president returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking 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 should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type 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 America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
