Trump's America During Trump's Second Term Seems Strangely Familiar to Observers from the East

As Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content in which I openly disparage the government … I think this is a learned behavior from China.”

Wang, 39, lived in Shanghai for nearly ten years, leaving in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.

But over the past year since the president was elected for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”

Her concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.

The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different governance models was evident. Following years of hope in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is shifting in China's path, instead of the other way around.

“The United States is experiencing an era of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, a professor at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … similar to events in the country half a century ago.”

Since the administration initiated the so-called a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump from a Chinese viewpoint has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though without the same levels of force.

However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’

The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on free speech.

Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng has lived in America since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from officials.

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 making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage seeking to divide the US.

“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined that something like this could happen in America – what typically happens in an authoritarian country,” he commented.

Deng’s backlash came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.

“Regarding going after dissenters and monitoring public speech about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge here,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in China today as too,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.

Zhang, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to America for ideals, since public debate on internal affairs in China is risky. However, “The US is no longer a ideal for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has declined generally.”

“We once viewed the US as the beacon of democratic governance, but since the new administration, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between state and private industry is often blurred.

Recently, authorities announced it would become an investor in a new company specialising in mineral refinement, after taking similar stakes in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.

Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on approved news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.

Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States might face 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.”

The professor notes that although many intellectuals in the country were surprised to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are all state-owned by default. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”

Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship here: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad