As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China 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, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
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 numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
