When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
But in the year since the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
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 American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US for several years, having fled China because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics 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 beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
