When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, 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 experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
However after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in America for several years, after escaping China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. 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 pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
