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

As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only considering what humor to deliver. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share material where I openly disparage authorities … I believe this is a habit acquired back home.”

Wang, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for nearly a decade, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to talks, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.

But over the past year after the president was elected again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas here I'm standing on unstable ground.”

Wang’s concerns mirror a new political reality in the US which many Chinese, or people who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments are attacked.

The president has not been shy regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears as if the US is being pulled in China's path, rather than the other way around.

“The United States is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in the country half a century ago.”

Since Trump unleashed what's termed a government streamlining body, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers see American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit without the same levels of violence.

However after the turmoil of the early months under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of climate has emerged in the US, which in different ways also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Beacon Has Become Less Bright’

The deepest parallel between Trump’s America and the East is the crackdown on open expression.

A former police officer, turned CCP dissenter, found himself in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.

Last fall, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom lost their jobs as a result of expressing criticism about Kirk – Deng faced a huge 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 should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.

His pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears parallels with China.

“In terms of targeting those who disagree and monitoring public speech about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge here,” noted an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in the East today as too,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.

Zhang, the legal expert, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals such as him once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in the country is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined across the board.”

“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be declining.”

The Trump administration’s acquisition of shares in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the distinction between government and private industry is frequently unclear.

Recently, authorities stated it would become an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies deemed vital to the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that America is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.

Yet, there remain significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. Last month, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a Pentagon policy that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.

An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it will still be more free, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”

The professor observes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, who are selected by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”

Nevertheless, Americans are beginning to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college who was previously outspoken on bilateral matters refused to speak for this piece. He stated: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I actually feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad