When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
However over the past year since the president was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America for several years, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – 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 also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
