When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
However since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
