When the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of violence.
However since the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash originated from online peers, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, authorities announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
