Trump's America During the New Administration Feels Strangely Recognizable to Those Watching from China

When the standup comedian, a rising performer, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she is not just considering which jokes to deliver. She also weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she explained. Or if she does, she makes certain it's not recorded for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I directly criticize the government … I believe this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”

The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, leaving in that year. By 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into a frenzy of “revenge bingeing on democracy,” attending talks, protests, and exploring New York’s public library.

However over the past year after the president returned to office again, there's been a noticeable shift in the atmosphere, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, while in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”

Her fears reflect an emerging political reality in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, perceive as eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader expects absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Institutions come under fire.

The president has not been shy about his admiration for Xi Jinping, the nation's strongman leader. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the bonhomie between both figures of countries with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.

“America is undergoing a period of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to marginalize or undermine established figures … similar to what happened in the country half a century ago.”

Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, numerous Chinese observers have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to execute presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has brought Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of violence.

But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump subsided, a new, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the US, which in different ways seems familiar to numerous Chinese people.

‘The Beacon Is Dimmer’

The most profound similarity between Trump’s America and China is the suppression on open expression.

A former police officer, now a Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. He resided in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to pressure from officials.

Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for making negative comments regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to create division.

“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” he commented.

Deng’s pile on originated from online peers, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with China.

“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in China now as too,” she added, adding that concerns are rising in the US of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring promoted by the CCP.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing domestic politics in China is dangerous. However, “America is no longer some kind of god for progressive Chinese. The US's reputation has worsened across the board.”

“We once viewed America as the symbol of constitutional democracy, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse seems to have become less luminous”.

Progressive Chinese, typically, behind closed doors, critical of China’s political system, now perceive it more acceptable than the US's, Zhang said. “It's somewhat difficult to acknowledge this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in environmental protection and promoting EVs and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, as represented 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 line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.

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

There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and China. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that required reporting solely on approved news. US courts have halted or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.

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 more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”

Zhang notes that although numerous scholars in China were surprised to see American colleges capitulate to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in the East, leading institutions are all state-owned inherently. University leaders, which are appointed by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They can’t afford defy orders.”

Still, Americans are beginning to take precautions that were once confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this piece. He stated: “The truth is, I fear of suppression here: I actually feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad