When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though without the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in 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 fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
