When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes her platform in New York, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US 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, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China could assist the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or weaken established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without the same levels of force.
But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.
His pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.
“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East today as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. However, “America isn't a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse 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, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between state and business is frequently unclear.
Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers vital to national security. The deals have left some investors nervous that the US is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
