As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities 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 American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
