As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
