When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, 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 environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America isn't a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and more 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 DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
