As the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not only thinking about what humor to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China today as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
