As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different 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 seems that the US 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, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have left some investors concerned that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
