As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering what humor to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since the president returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US for several years, after escaping China due to harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
