When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.
But in the year since the president was elected for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.
The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models was evident. And after decades of optimism in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” said Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
But since the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel 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 the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in America for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in the East now as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still major differences between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded reporting solely on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, 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, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor observes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
