As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves 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 the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
