When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But in the year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without the same levels of force.
But since the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America for several years, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities stated 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. The deals have left some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have halted or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, 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 many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
