When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content where I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears reflect a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions early on in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of force.
But since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled China due to pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. 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”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, 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 declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
