As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng resided in America for several years, having fled China because of pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash originated from online peers, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “The US isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge 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,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved news. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, 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 freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
