As the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year after the president was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her fears mirror a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, 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 rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.
But since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in America for several years, after escaping China due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “America is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image 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 less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup focused on mineral refinement, following similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, 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, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once vocal on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad