When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year since the president returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, 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 the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in America for several years, having fled China because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in the East now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation'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 freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. An academic at an American college who was previously vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
