When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in New York, she is not only thinking about what humor to tell. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year after the president returned to office again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with China may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East now as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to national security. 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 Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in China were surprised to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
