As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed 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 America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … 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, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have left some investors 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. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. US courts have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
