When the standup comedian, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of public monitoring also has similarities with China.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is 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.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
