When the standup comedian, a rising comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she's not only considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share content where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he once faced in his homeland. He has lived in America for several years, having fled the country because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
