When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China see 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 purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
