As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “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, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth 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 America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, after escaping China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
