When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year since the president returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation 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, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics 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 across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
