As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
But over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in the East now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
