As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just considering which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year after the president was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to events in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
But after the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China today as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
