When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to events in China decades past.”
Since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on in office, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired for 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 divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
