When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
But since the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders 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 the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
