As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I would never publicly share material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
But in the year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have made some investors concerned 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. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
