As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new climate in America which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in the East now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
