When Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But over the past year since the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, 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 cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
However since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, turned CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in the US for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol 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, skeptical about China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
