When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about what humor to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year since the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous 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 Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He resided in America since 2019, 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 nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “The US isn't a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
