When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from openly attacking the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.
But over the past year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems as if America is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.
“The United States is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to marginalize or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration subsided, a new, different kind of climate has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in the US since 2019, having fled the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China now as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
