When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
However over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, 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, “America is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
