When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in New York, she's not just thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in that year. By 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and exploring New York’s library system.
However in the year after Donald Trump returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror a new climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since Trump initiated what's termed a government streamlining body, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, though absent the same levels of violence.
However after the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in the US since 2019, after escaping China due to pressure from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired for making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.
“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East now as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government stated it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that America is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in China’s CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression here: I actually feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
