When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though absent the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad