When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of force.
But after the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to national security. These moves have left some investors concerned that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved news. US courts have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, 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 official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
