As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in the East today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between government and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
