As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in New York, she's not only thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect a new climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash originated from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
