Trump's America During Trump's Second Term Seems Strangely Familiar to Those Watching from China

When Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering what humor to deliver. She also carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I refrain from openly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”

Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “overindulging on democracy,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s public library.

However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”

Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in China, find eerily similar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects total allegiance. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.

Trump has openly expressed regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that the US is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.

“America is undergoing an era of cultural revolution,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Trump, is attempting to rally the masses in order to sideline or undermine the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”

Ever since the administration unleashed the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.

But after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, an unfamiliar, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese people.

‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’

The deepest parallel between the US today and China is the crackdown on open expression.

Deng Haiyan, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in his homeland. Deng has lived in the US for several years, after escaping the country because of pressure from the authorities.

In September, after the death of a public figure, he posted that Kirk was “despicable”. Like people across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – he encountered significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.

“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.

His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance also has parallels with China.

“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … It's appearing in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as well,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a type of monitoring promoted by the CCP.

Zhang, the legal expert, explained that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for ideals, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America isn't a god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”

“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has prompted comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and business is often blurred.

Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, following similar stakes in other companies deemed essential for national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.

Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.

Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “The United States might face its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”

The professor observes that while many intellectuals in the country were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, which are appointed by the government, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”

Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously vocal on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression here: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad