As the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly attacking the government,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize authorities … I think it's a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.
The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging organizations of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, though without equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in a controversy recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in China now as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a form of surveillance promoted by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a fresh phase of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, an action that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “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
