When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to tell. 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 would never publish openly content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.
However over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with the East could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in China's path, instead of vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels of violence.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in America – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from online peers, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons 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 specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have made certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see US universities capitulate 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 selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
