As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse 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 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, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to national security. The deals have made some investors nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
