When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's public library.
But over the past year since the president was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, 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 post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
