When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year after the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in America for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China now as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions 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 government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
