As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
But in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in China now as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
