When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … 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 moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood where the line was, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in China today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't a god for Chinese liberals. 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 appears dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
