As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for social media. “I would never publicly share content in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
However since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy 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 the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
