As the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I think it's a habit from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s public library.
But over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that the US is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“The United States is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of force.
But after the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind 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 Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping China because of pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it would become an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
