When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year after Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood 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 who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to events in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways also feels recognizable to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him used to look to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for national security. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
