As the standup comedian, a rising comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for social media. “I would never publish openly material in which I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
Wang, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring New York’s library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in America that closer ties with China could assist the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the masses to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance through the lens of China's historical period. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit without the same levels of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’
The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.
Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“That event was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
His backlash came from online peers, instead of the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China now as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on educators, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”
“We once viewed America as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”
The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have left some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
