When the standup comedian, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But in the year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in China decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from officials.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, following comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
