When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publish openly material where I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However in the year since the president was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Wang’s concerns mirror an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people with experience in the country, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The president expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions are attacked.
The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with China 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, rather than vice versa.
“America is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.
But since the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’
The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a CCP critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. He resided in the US since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to create division.
“That event surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in the United States – something that typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.
“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is observed in China now as too,” she added, stating that there were now fears in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with China, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.
On Monday, authorities stated it will take an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have left some investors concerned that the US is embarking on a new era of government meddling in the private sector.
Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. US courts have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
