As the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. And after decades of optimism in America that improved relations with China could assist the rising power become more open, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in China decades past.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, after the death of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“This incident was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance also has similarities with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US'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 developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in China’s CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, commented: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain freer, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding DEI policies and free speech on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously associated with repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
