As the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s public library.
However over the past year since the president returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start of his term, many in China see US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in America for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
