When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Ever 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 have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America since 2019, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
