As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted 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 startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
