As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
However in the year since the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, having fled the country because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
