As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging 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 “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in America for several years, after escaping China due to pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have left some investors concerned that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, 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 it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
