As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes the stage in New York, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find disturbingly similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities stated it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, 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 freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
