Trump's United States During the New Administration Feels Oddly Familiar to Those Watching from China

As the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not only thinking about what humor to deliver. She also weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not captured for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”

The comedian, 39, resided in Shanghai for almost ten years, leaving in that year. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into New York’s public library.

But in the year since the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, whereas in the US I find myself on unstable ground.”

Wang’s fears reflect an emerging climate in America which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in the country, find disturbingly similar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Reporters are targeted. Institutions come under fire.

The president has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's strongman leader. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a brief ceasefire in economic tensions recently, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in the US that improved relations with China may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that 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, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the masses to marginalize or undermine the elite … similar to events in China half a century ago.”

Ever since Trump initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions at the start in office, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing organizations of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent the same levels 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 US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.

‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’

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

Deng Haiyan, turned CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng resided in the US since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from officials.

In September, after the death of a public figure, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people across the US – who were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced significant backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.

“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in America – something that should only happen in a repressive state,” he commented.

His backlash came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of public monitoring bears similarities with the East.

“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a type of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.

Zhang, the legal expert, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, since public debate on internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “The US isn't a god for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”

“We once viewed America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than the US's, he stated. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and private industry is often blurred.

Recently, the US government announced it will take a shareholder in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, following similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for national security. The deals have made some investors concerned that the US is entering a new era of government meddling in the private sector.

There are still major differences between Trump’s America and China. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian refused to sign to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's party-dominated 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, far more severe than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”

Zhang notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are all state-owned by default. Administrators, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They dare not defy orders.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once outspoken on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He stated: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad