As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However over the past year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“America 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 trying to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in China today as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning 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 dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
