As the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.
But over the past year after the president was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since the administration unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America for several years, after escaping the country because of pressure from officials.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as well,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, since public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities announced it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
