As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
However over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
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 since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in the East today as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between government and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into 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 although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
