As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I would never publicly share material in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a habit from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
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 says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between government 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 other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
