When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said 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 undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since the administration unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
However after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in the East now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made some investors nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
