As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America for several years, having fled China due to harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
