As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to 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. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
