Trump's America Under Trump's Second Term Seems Strangely Recognizable to Those Watching from the East

As Vickie Wang, an emerging performer, takes the stage in the Big Apple, she is not just thinking about which jokes to tell. She also carefully considers which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the administration,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I would never publicly share material in which I directly criticize authorities … I think this is a learned behavior acquired back home.”

Wang, thirty-nine, lived in the Chinese metropolis for almost a decade, leaving in 2022. In 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on an intense period of “revenge bingeing on freedom,” attending talks, protests, and exploring the city's library system.

However in the year since Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there's been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I understood where the line was, whereas in the US I'm standing on shifting sands.”

Wang’s fears mirror an emerging climate in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people who have lived in China, perceive as eerily familiar. Enemies are ostracised. The president expects absolute loyalty. Reporters face scrutiny. Institutions are attacked.

Trump has not been shy regarding his respect for China's leader, the nation's authoritarian figure. He's called Xi as a “great guy”. When they reached a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of countries with diametrically opposed governance models was evident. Following years of hope in America that improved relations with China may help the rising power become more open, in the current administration, it appears that America is shifting in the Chinese direction, rather than the other way around.

“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” stated a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The president, Donald Trump, is trying to mobilise the grassroots to sideline or undermine the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China decades past.”

Since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start of his term, many in China have viewed American governance via the perspective of the Cultural Revolution. Whether it is the mobilisation of the youth to carry out the leader’s will, or cleansing institutions of those deemed opposition, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, albeit without equivalent degrees of force.

But after the turmoil of the initial period under Trump has calmed, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has settled in the US, which variously also feels familiar to numerous Chinese individuals.

‘The Beacon Is Less Bright’

The most profound similarity between the US today and the East is the crackdown on open expression.

A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party critic, ended up in the eye of a storm this year, similar to what he’d only previously experienced in his homeland. Deng resided in America since 2019, having fled China because of harassment from officials.

Last fall, after the death of Charlie Kirk, Deng tweeted that Kirk was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – many of whom were fired for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered a huge backlash. Relatives was doxed and he was accused of espionage attempting to divide the US.

“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing would occur in America – what should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.

His pile on came from fellow social media users, rather than the state, but that kind of social surveillance bears similarities with the East.

“In terms of targeting those who disagree and starting to surveil open discourse about issues that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” said Maria Repnikova, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she said, stating that concerns are rising in the US of pupils informing against educators, a type of surveillance that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.

Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to America for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in the country is risky. But now, “America isn't a ideal for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”

“We once viewed America as the beacon of constitutional democracy, but since the new administration, that guide appears less luminous”.

Chinese liberals, who are often, at least in private, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it less objectionable than America’s, Zhang said. “It’s sort of difficult to acknowledge this reality … but after the pandemic, the government seems to be doing correct policies in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” Zhang said, while “the West, exemplified by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has prompted parallels with China, where the line between government and business is frequently unclear.

Recently, the US government stated it would become an investor in a startup focused on mineral refinement, after taking comparable shares in additional firms it considers vital to national security. The deals have left certain stakeholders nervous that the US is embarking on a new era of state intervention in private industry.

There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. Last month, multiple media outlets among others declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous Trump’s actions, something that is impossible in the nation's party-dominated legal system.

Isaac Stone Fish, who established of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “The United States could descend into its gravest challenge of its history, far more severe than it is now, and it would remain more free, open, and liberal than the East under its leader.”

The professor observes that while many intellectuals in China were surprised to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and open discourse on campus, in China, leading institutions are publicly controlled inherently. University leaders, who are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are beginning to adopt measures previously associated with repressive regimes. An academic at a US university who was previously outspoken on US-China issues refused to be interviewed for this article. He said: “The truth is, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I actually feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad