When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
However in the year since the president returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, 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 … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
