The United States During Trump's Second Term Seems Oddly Familiar to Those Watching from the East

When Vickie Wang, a rising performer, takes the stage in New York, she is not only considering which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for online platforms. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage the government … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”

Wang, 39, resided in the Chinese metropolis for nearly ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending lectures, protests, and delving into the city's public library.

However over the past year after the president was elected for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she notes. “In China, I understood the boundaries, whereas here I'm standing on shifting sands.”

Her concerns reflect a new climate in America which many Chinese, or people with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.

The president has openly expressed about his admiration for Xi Jinping, China’s strongman leader. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. When they reached a temporary truce in the trade war on Thursday, the bonhomie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that closer ties with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it seems that the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.

“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, a professor at a top Chinese university. “The top leader, Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”

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 have viewed US politics via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to execute the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.

However since the upheaval of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems familiar to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Lighthouse Is Less Bright’

The most profound parallel between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.

Deng Haiyan, now a CCP critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, the likes of which he once faced in China. He resided in America since 2019, after escaping the country due to harassment from officials.

In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others across the US – who lost their jobs as a result of making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he faced allegations of being a Chinese spy attempting to divide the US.

“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing could happen in America – something that typically happens in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.

Deng’s backlash originated from online peers, rather than the state, but such of public monitoring bears parallels with the East.

“In terms of going after dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted Maria Repnikova, a scholar at a US university. “That’s something that you see in China now as well,” she added, adding that there were now fears in the US of pupils informing against educators, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on domestic politics in China is risky. However, “The US isn't a god for Chinese liberals. America’s image has worsened across the board.”

“We used to see America as the symbol of democratic governance, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.

Chinese liberals, typically, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this reality … but post-COVID, authorities seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “the West, as represented by America, seems to be in decline.”

The government's purchase of shares in US companies has prompted parallels with the East, where the line between state and private industry is frequently unclear.

On Monday, the US government stated it would become an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in other companies it considers essential for the country's safety. These moves have made some investors nervous that the US is embarking on a fresh phase of state intervention in the private sector.

There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that required they only report on government-authorised news. American judiciary have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, an action that would be impossible in China’s party-dominated judiciary.

An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”

The professor notes that although numerous scholars in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on campus, in China, the top universities are publicly controlled by default. Administrators, which are appointed by the state, “cannot of saying no. They can’t afford defy orders.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously confined to repressive regimes. One professor at an American college who was previously vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of suppression in the US: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad