As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
However in the year since the president was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng 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 Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse 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 China now as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for ideals, since openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing 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 Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies it considers essential for national security. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
