As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, 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 the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
