As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not only considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP critic, found himself in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in America since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in China now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
