When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage the government … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable 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 improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
