As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have made some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
