When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But in the year after the president was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, distinct type of climate has settled in the US, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities stated it would become a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that America is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
