When the standup comedian, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in New York, she's not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I directly criticize the government … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those with experience in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.
Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed political systems became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if America is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken established figures … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”
Since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of force.
However after the upheaval of the initial period under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party critic, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this would occur in the United States – what should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
His pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.
“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring open discourse on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing internal affairs in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”
“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide appears dimmer”.
Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, appear in decline.”
The Trump administration’s purchase of shares in American firms has also drawn parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
Recently, the US government announced it would become a shareholder in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.
There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”
The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”
Still, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship here: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad
