When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into the city's public library.
However in the year since the president was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on federal institutions at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in the East now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to America for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have left some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
