When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this would occur in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
