When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I openly disparage the government … I think it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year since the president was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions early on in office, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America for several years, after escaping the country because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in the East today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
