When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year after Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, 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 mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on 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 declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
