As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the 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 the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. However, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US'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 promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
