As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America for several years, having fled China due to pressure from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, 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 reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on 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 refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
