When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever 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 US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated 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 open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China today as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since 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 generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US'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 developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
