As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America for several years, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
