As the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes her platform in New York, she's not only thinking about what humor to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I openly disparage authorities … I think this is a habit from China.”
The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to America. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s library system.
However over the past year since the president was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”
Her fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, Trump as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though without equivalent degrees of force.
However since the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to numerous Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng resided in America for several years, after escaping the country because of harassment from officials.
In September, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others across the US – who were fired as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to create division.
“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with China.
“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East today as well,” she said, adding that there were now fears in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, appear declining.”
The government's acquisition of shares in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between state and business is often blurred.
Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in other companies deemed essential for the country's safety. These moves have left certain stakeholders concerned that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than currently, and it will still be freer, open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”
Still, Americans are beginning to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad
