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

When the standup comedian, an emerging comedic talent, takes her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just thinking about which jokes to deliver. Additionally, she weighs what subjects to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly attacking the government,” she explained. And when she does, she ensures it isn't captured for online platforms. “I would never publish openly content where I openly disparage the government … I believe it's a learned behavior from China.”

The comedian, thirty-nine, lived in Shanghai for almost a decade, departing in that year. In 2025, she moved to America. When she got there, she dove into an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.

But over the past year since Donald Trump was elected again, there has been a noticeable shift in the environment, she says. “In China, I understood the boundaries, while here I find myself on shifting sands.”

Wang’s fears mirror a new political reality in America which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in China, perceive as disturbingly familiar. Opponents are ostracised. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists are targeted. Institutions come under fire.

Trump has not been shy about his admiration for China's leader, China’s authoritarian figure. He has described Xi as “fantastic”. As they agreed a brief ceasefire in the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of countries with vastly different political systems was evident. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East could assist the growing nation become more open, under Trump 2.0, it appears that America is being pulled in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.

“America is undergoing an era of societal upheaval,” stated Zhang Qianfan, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots in order to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”

Ever since Trump unleashed the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or the agency, on federal institutions early on of his term, numerous Chinese observers see American governance via the perspective of China's historical period. Be it the rallying of the youth to execute presidential directives, or purging institutions of those deemed opposition, Trump as viewed from China has delivered disorder reminiscent of Mao to the US, though absent the same levels of violence.

But after the upheaval 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 Has Become Dimmer’

The deepest similarity between the US today and China is the suppression on open expression.

A former police officer, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled China due to harassment from the authorities.

Last fall, following the passing of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was “despicable”. Similar to others nationwide – many of whom were fired for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family was doxed and he was accused of espionage seeking to create division.

“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing would occur in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.

Deng’s pile on originated from fellow social media users, rather than the government, but such of social surveillance bears parallels with the East.

“In terms of going after dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … It's appearing in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “That’s something that you see in China today as too,” she said, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on educators, a form of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, said that progressive thinkers like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because public debate on internal affairs in China is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. America’s image has declined across the board.”

“We used to see America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide seems to have become less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, critical of China’s political system, are increasingly finding it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this … but after the pandemic, authorities appears to be pursuing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and tech investment,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The Trump administration’s purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the distinction between state and private industry is often blurred.

On Monday, authorities announced it will take an investor in a new company specialising in rare earth processing, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers essential for national security. These moves have made some investors concerned that America is entering a new era of state intervention in private industry.

Yet, there remain major differences between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets among others refused to sign to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on government-authorised news. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be impossible in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.

Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “The United States could descend into the worst crisis of all time, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”

Zhang observes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities yield to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and open discourse on university grounds, in the East, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the government, “have no liberty of saying no. They dare not to be disobedient.”

Still, Americans are starting to adopt measures previously confined to more authoritarian countries. One professor at an American college once vocal on bilateral matters declined to be interviewed for this article. He said: “Honestly, I fear of suppression in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad