When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not just considering what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
However in the year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
However after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
