As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s public library.
However over the past year after Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
