When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift 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 a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
