When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I would never publicly share material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Since the administration unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, 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 resided in America since 2019, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
