As the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from directly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly material where I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s public library.
But over the past year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her concerns mirror a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies are ostracised. The president demands total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.
“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the masses to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”
Since Trump unleashed what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers see US politics through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of young people to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to America, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which in different ways seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.
‘The Lighthouse Is Dimmer’
The most profound parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.
A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused 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,” Deng said.
His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring also has parallels with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against teachers, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.
The professor, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him used to look to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is risky. But now, “The US is no longer a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We used to see the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, who are often, behind closed doors, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”
The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.
On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that America is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.
Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”
The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”
Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college once outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
