As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
