The United States Under the New Administration Feels Strangely Recognizable to Those Watching from China

When Vickie Wang, a rising comedic talent, steps onto her platform in the Big Apple, she's not just considering which jokes to tell. She also weighs which topics to steer clear of. “I don't engage in openly criticizing the administration,” she explained. And when she ventures there, she makes certain it's not recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly material in which I openly disparage authorities … I think it's a learned behavior from China.”

The comedian, 39, lived in Shanghai for almost ten years, departing in 2022. By 2025, she relocated to America. When she got there, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” going to lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.

However in the year after the president was elected again, there has been a “palpable change” in the atmosphere, she says. “Back home, I knew the boundaries, while here I'm standing on unstable ground.”

Wang’s concerns reflect an emerging political reality in the US which numerous individuals from China, or people with experience in the country, perceive as eerily similar. Enemies face exclusion. The president demands total allegiance. Reporters are targeted. Establishments come under fire.

Trump has openly expressed about his admiration for China's leader, China’s strongman leader. He's called him as a “great guy”. As they agreed a temporary truce in economic tensions on Thursday, the camaraderie between both figures of nations with vastly different governance models became clear. Following years of optimism in America that improved relations with the East may help the growing nation become more open, in the current administration, it seems as if the US is shifting in China's path, rather than vice versa.

“The United States is experiencing an era of societal upheaval,” said a constitutional law expert, an academic at Peking University. “The top leader, Donald Trump, is trying to rally the grassroots in order to marginalize or weaken the elite … reminiscent of what happened in China half a century ago.”

Ever since the administration initiated the so-called Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on the Washington bureaucracy at the start in office, many in China see US politics through the lens of China's historical period. Be it the mobilisation of young people to execute the leader’s will, or purging institutions of perceived enemies, the president from a Chinese viewpoint has delivered Mao-style chaos to the US, though absent equivalent degrees of force.

But after the upheaval of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of climate has emerged in the country, which variously also feels familiar to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’

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

A former police officer, turned Chinese Communist party dissenter, found himself in a controversy recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. He has lived in America since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from officials.

Last fall, following the passing of a public figure, he posted that the individual was “despicable”. Like people across the US – many of whom lost their jobs for expressing criticism about Kirk – he encountered significant backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he was accused of being a Chinese spy attempting to create division.

“This incident surprised me deeply. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – what typically happens in a repressive state,” Deng said.

Deng’s pile on came from fellow social media users, instead of the government, but such of social surveillance bears similarities with China.

“In terms of going after those who disagree and monitoring public speech on topics that are sensitive … It's appearing here,” said an academic, a scholar at Georgia State University. “This is observed in the East now as well,” she added, stating that concerns are rising in America of pupils informing against educators, a type of monitoring promoted by Chinese authorities.

The professor, the Peking University law professor, explained that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself once turned to the US for political inspiration, in part because openly discussing internal affairs in China is dangerous. However, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has declined generally.”

“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, this lighthouse appears dimmer”.

Chinese liberals, typically, behind closed doors, skeptical about the nation's governance, now perceive it more acceptable than America’s, Zhang said. “It's somewhat painful to accept this reality … but after the pandemic, authorities seems to be doing correct policies in environmental protection and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, exemplified by America, appear declining.”

The government's purchase of stakes in US companies has also drawn comparisons with the East, where the line between government and private industry is frequently unclear.

On Monday, the US government stated it will take an investor in a startup specialising in rare earth processing, following comparable shares in additional firms deemed 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 significant distinctions between the US under Trump and the East. In October, multiple media outlets including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded reporting solely on approved news. US courts have blocked or overturned numerous Trump’s actions, something that is unthinkable in the nation's CCP-controlled legal system.

An analyst, the founder of Strategy Risks, a China-focused advisory firm, commented: “America might face its gravest challenge of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it would remain more free, more open, and more liberal than China under Xi.”

The professor notes that while numerous scholars in China were shocked to see American colleges yield to government demands concerning DEI policies and free speech on campus, in the East, the top universities are all state-owned inherently. Administrators, which are selected by the state, “have no liberty refuse. They dare not defy orders.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to adopt measures that were once associated with more authoritarian countries. One professor at a US university once outspoken on US-China issues refused to speak for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel less afraid criticizing China's leader these days than say anything bad