As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
