The America Under Trump's Second Term Feels Strangely Recognizable to Those Watching from the East

As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she makes certain it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publicly share content in which I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”

The comedian, thirty-nine, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, demonstrations, and exploring the city's public library.

But in the year since the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, while here I'm standing on shifting sands.”

Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments are attacked.

The president has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He has described him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with diametrically opposed governance models became clear. Following years of hope in America that closer ties with the East may help the growing nation to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that America is shifting in China's path, rather than the other way around.

“The United States is experiencing a period of cultural revolution,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken established figures … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”

Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the rallying of young people to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.

However after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which in different ways seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Beacon Has Become Dimmer’

The deepest similarity between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on free speech.

Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.

In September, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who were fired for expressing criticism regarding him – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.

“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 backlash originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with China.

“Regarding going after those who disagree and starting to surveil public speech about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at a US university. “That’s something that you see in the East now as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance promoted by Chinese authorities.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in the country is risky. However, “The US isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”

“We once viewed the US as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.

Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, 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 Trump administration’s purchase of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.

On Monday, the US government announced it would become an investor in a new company focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms deemed essential for the country's safety. The deals have left some investors concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in private industry.

Yet, there remain major differences between Trump’s America and China. Last month, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or reversed many of Trump’s actions, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.

Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be freer, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”

Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. An academic at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters declined to speak for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader now than say anything bad