When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
However in the year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However since the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US 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, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
