When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and delving into the city's library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new climate in America which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged 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 public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, 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 more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have made some investors concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
