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

As Vickie Wang, a rising performer, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she is not only considering what humor to tell. Additionally, she weighs which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. Or if she ventures there, she ensures it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publicly share content where I openly disparage authorities … I believe it's a habit from China.”

The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. By 2025, she moved to the US. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “overindulging on freedom,” going to talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.

However in the year after the president returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “In China, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on unstable ground.”

Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or those with experience in China, find disturbingly familiar. Enemies face exclusion. The leader demands total allegiance. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.

The president has openly expressed regarding his respect for Xi Jinping, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called him as “fantastic”. As they agreed a temporary truce in the trade war recently, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. And after decades of hope in the US that improved relations with China may help the growing nation to liberalise, under Trump 2.0, it seems as if America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than vice versa.

“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at a top Chinese university. “The president, Donald Trump, is attempting to mobilise the grassroots to marginalize or undermine established figures … reminiscent of events in China decades past.”

Since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on the Washington bureaucracy early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the rallying of young people to carry out presidential directives, or purging organizations of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has brought disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.

However after the turmoil of the early months under Trump has calmed, a new, distinct type of climate has emerged in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.

‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’

The deepest similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on free speech.

A former police officer, turned CCP critic, ended up in a controversy this year, similar to what he once faced in China. He has lived in the US for several years, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.

Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired as a result of expressing criticism regarding him – Deng faced a huge backlash. Relatives had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy seeking to create division.

“That event surprised me deeply. I hadn't thought such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” he commented.

His pile on originated from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but that kind of social surveillance also has similarities with China.

“Regarding targeting dissenters and monitoring open discourse about issues deemed controversial … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something observed in the East today as too,” she said, adding that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by the CCP.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers such as him once turned to the US for ideals, in part because public debate on internal affairs in the country is dangerous. But now, “The US is no longer some kind of ideal for progressive Chinese. America’s image has declined across the board.”

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

Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this … but post-COVID, the government appears to be pursuing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, seems to be in decline.”

The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted comparisons with the East, where the line between government and business is often blurred.

Recently, authorities stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for the country's safety. The deals have left certain stakeholders concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.

There are still significant distinctions between Trump’s America and the East. Last month, several news organisations including the Guardian refused to sign to a Pentagon policy that required they only report on approved information. US courts have blocked or reversed many of Trump’s actions, an action that would be unthinkable in the nation's party-dominated judiciary.

An analyst, who established of a consulting firm, a China-focused advisory firm, said: “America could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than currently, and it would remain freer, open, and liberal than China under Xi.”

Zhang observes that while numerous scholars in the country were shocked to see US universities yield to official requests regarding diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled by default. University leaders, which are selected by the government, “cannot refuse. They can’t afford to be disobedient.”

Nevertheless, Americans are starting to take precautions that were once associated with repressive regimes. One professor at a US university once vocal on bilateral matters refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad