When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
But over the past year since the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America for several years, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America 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 less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
