Demands of absolute loyalty and attacks on institutions have raise memories of Mao-style chaos from US watchers in China
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hen Vickie Wang, a budding standup comedian, gets on stage in New York, she’s not just thinking about what jokes to crack. She’s also thinking about which ones to avoid. “I don’t criticise the administration directly,” she said. Or if she does, she makes sure it’s not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly publish something where I directly criticise the government … I think it’s a learned behaviour from China”.
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025 she relocated to the US. When she arrived, she went on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy”, going to talks, protests and diving into New York’s public library.
But in the year since Donald Trump was elected as US president for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I’m standing on shifting sands.”
