As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However over the past year after the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest 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 a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “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 promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
