As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, 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 cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in the East now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type 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 risky. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
