As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
However in the year since the president returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
However after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to America for ideals, since public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become a shareholder in a new company focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, 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 yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
