As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not only considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the year after Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a form 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. However, “America isn't a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
