As the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly attacking the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content where I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”
The comedian, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on democracy,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year after Donald Trump was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I find myself on unstable ground.”
Her concerns reflect a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.
Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, instead of the other way around.
“America is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is trying to rally the masses to sideline or undermine established figures … reminiscent of what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.
However after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the suppression on free speech.
Deng Haiyan, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America for several years, after escaping China because of harassment from the authorities.
Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.
“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.
Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring also has similarities with the East.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East now as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.
Zhang, the legal expert, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined generally.”
“We once viewed the US as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide appears less luminous”.
Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”
The government's acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.
On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed vital to national security. These moves have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is entering a new era 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 required reporting solely on approved news. American judiciary have halted or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.
An analyst, the founder of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang observes that while many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests regarding DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad
