When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share material where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics 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 perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, 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, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America 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 America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
