As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in America for several years, after escaping China due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “America isn't a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
