As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
However in the year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent the same levels of violence.
However since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He resided in America for several years, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer a god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
