As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage the government … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
