As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that 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 a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for 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 divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for ideals, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
