When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and delving into New York’s public library.
However in the year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in China, find eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in America that improved relations with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.
However since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“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, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
