As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in the East now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
