When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”
Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
But over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, perceive as disturbingly similar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of force.
However after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is observed in the East now as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “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 investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it would become a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
