As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share material in which I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
However since the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America for several years, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“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, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences 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 information. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
