Trump's United States During the New Administration Seems Oddly Familiar to Observers from China

As the standup comedian, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just considering what humor to deliver. She also carefully considers what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly attacking the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for online platforms. “I would never publicly share content where I directly criticize authorities … I believe it's a habit acquired back home.”

The comedian, 39, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost ten years, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. Upon arrival, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” going to lectures, demonstrations, and delving into New York’s library system.

But in the year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she notes. “In China, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”

Wang’s fears mirror an emerging political reality in America which many Chinese, or people who have lived in China, find eerily familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Establishments come under fire.

Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He has described him as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions recently, the bonhomie between both figures of nations with vastly different political systems was evident. Following years of optimism in the US that closer ties with China may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.

“America is experiencing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to what happened in the country decades past.”

Ever since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see US politics via the perspective of China's historical period. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit absent the same levels of force.

However after the turmoil of the initial period of the new administration has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has settled in the US, which variously also feels recognizable to numerous Chinese people.

‘The Lighthouse Has Become Less Bright’

The most profound similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on free speech.

A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, ended up in a controversy this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, after escaping China due to pressure from officials.

Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Similar to others nationwide – who were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of espionage seeking to divide the US.

“That event was a real shock. I hadn't thought that something like this could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” Deng said.

Deng’s backlash originated from online peers, rather than the government, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.

“Regarding targeting dissenters and starting to surveil public speech on topics deemed controversial … It's appearing here,” noted an academic, a scholar at a US university. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by the CCP.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that progressive thinkers like himself used to look to America for political inspiration, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is dangerous. But now, “America is no longer some kind of god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”

“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears dimmer”.

Progressive Chinese, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, the government appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be declining.”

The Trump administration’s acquisition of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with China, where the line between government and private industry is often blurred.

On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a startup focused on rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in other companies it considers vital to the country's safety. The deals have made certain stakeholders nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.

There are still significant distinctions between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations among others refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required reporting solely on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned many of Trump’s actions, an action that is impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled judiciary.

Isaac Stone Fish, who established of Strategy Risks, specializing in China, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be freer, more open, and more liberal than the East under its leader.”

Zhang notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not defy orders.”

Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi now than say anything bad