When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to 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 of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled 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 were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
