When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But in the year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “America isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who 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 an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
