As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she does, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in America for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing 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 declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
