When the standup comedian, an emerging performer, steps onto the stage in the Big Apple, she is not only thinking about which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she does, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content in which I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a habit acquired back home.”
The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.
However in the year after the president returned to office again, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”
Her fears reflect an emerging climate in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily similar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.
Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with diametrically opposed political systems was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.
“America is undergoing a period of cultural revolution,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to rally the grassroots to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”
Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.
But after the upheaval of the initial period of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, distinct type of political atmosphere has settled in the country, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese people.
‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’
The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.
A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.
In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.
“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.
Deng’s backlash came from online peers, rather than the government, but such of public monitoring bears similarities with China.
“In terms of targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something observed in China today as well,” she said, stating that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.
The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't some kind of ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”
“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.
Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be declining.”
The government's purchase of shares in American firms has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.
On Monday, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers vital to the country's safety. These moves have made certain stakeholders concerned that the US is entering a fresh phase of government meddling in private industry.
There are still major differences between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on government-authorised news. American judiciary have blocked or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in China’s party-dominated legal system.
An analyst, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”
Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”
Still, people in the US are starting to take precautions that were once confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi now than say anything bad
