As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in China decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it 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 equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America isn't a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to national security. The deals have left some investors concerned that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
