The America Under the New Administration Feels Strangely Recognizable to Those Watching from the East

As Vickie Wang, an emerging comedic talent, steps onto the stage in New York, she is not just considering which jokes to tell. Additionally, she carefully considers which topics to avoid. “I don't engage in directly criticizing the government,” she stated. And when she ventures there, she ensures it isn't recorded for social media. “I'd never publish openly content where I openly disparage the government … I think it's a learned behavior acquired back home.”

Wang, 39, resided in Shanghai for nearly ten years, departing in that year. In 2025, she relocated to the US. Upon arrival, she embarked on a frenzy of “overindulging on freedom,” attending lectures, protests, and exploring the city's public library.

However over the past year after Donald Trump returned to office for the second time, there has been a “palpable change” in the environment, she notes. “Back home, I knew where the line was, whereas in the US I find myself on shifting sands.”

Her fears mirror a new climate in the US which many Chinese, or those who have lived in the country, find eerily familiar. Opponents face exclusion. The leader demands absolute loyalty. Journalists face scrutiny. Establishments come under fire.

The president 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 the trade war on Thursday, the camaraderie between the two leaders of nations with vastly different political systems became clear. And after decades of optimism in the US that improved relations with the East may help the rising power to liberalise, in the current administration, it appears as if the US is shifting in the Chinese direction, instead of vice versa.

“The United States is experiencing 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 to sideline or weaken the elite … reminiscent of events in China half a century ago.”

Since Trump initiated what's termed Department for Government Efficiency, or Doge, on federal institutions early on of his term, many in China have viewed American governance through the lens of the Cultural Revolution. Be it the mobilisation of young people to carry out presidential directives, or cleansing institutions of perceived enemies, the president as viewed from China has delivered Mao-style chaos to America, albeit absent equivalent degrees of violence.

But since the turmoil of the early months of the new administration subsided, an unfamiliar, different kind of political atmosphere has emerged in the country, which variously seems recognizable to many Chinese individuals.

‘The Lighthouse Has Become Dimmer’

The deepest parallel between the US today and the East is the suppression on free speech.

Deng Haiyan, now a CCP dissenter, ended up in the eye of a storm recently, the likes of which he once faced in China. Deng has lived in the US since 2019, having fled the country due to harassment from the authorities.

In September, after the death of Charlie Kirk, he posted that the individual was a “scumbag”. Like people nationwide – who lost their jobs for making negative comments about Kirk – Deng faced a huge backlash. His family had personal info leaked and he faced allegations of espionage attempting to divide the US.

“This incident was a real shock. I never imagined such a thing could happen in the United States – something that should only happen in an authoritarian country,” Deng said.

His pile on originated from online peers, rather than the state, but such of social surveillance also has parallels with the East.

“In terms of targeting dissenters and starting to surveil open discourse on topics that are sensitive … That’s starting to emerge in the US,” noted an academic, an associate professor at Georgia State University. “This is that you see in the East today as well,” she added, stating that there were now fears in America of students reporting on teachers, a form of monitoring that has been encouraged by Chinese authorities.

Zhang, the Peking University law professor, said that liberal Chinese intellectuals like himself used to look to the US for political inspiration, since openly discussing domestic politics in China is risky. However, “America is no longer a god for Chinese liberals. The US's reputation has worsened generally.”

“We used to see America as the beacon of democratic governance, but after Trump took power, that guide seems to have become dimmer”.

Progressive Chinese, who are often, at least in private, critical of the nation's governance, are increasingly finding it less objectionable than America’s, he stated. “It’s sort of painful to accept this reality … but post-COVID, the government seems to be doing the right thing in improving the environment and developing electric cars and investing in hi-tech,” he noted, while “Western nations, as represented by the United States, seems to be in decline.”

The government's acquisition of stakes in American firms has also drawn comparisons with China, where the distinction between government and business is frequently unclear.

Recently, the US government announced it will take an investor in a new company focused on rare earth processing, after taking similar stakes in additional firms deemed essential for national security. The deals have made some investors nervous that America is entering a new era of state intervention in the private sector.

There are still major differences between the US under Trump and China. In October, several news organisations including the Guardian declined to agree to a defense department rule that demanded they only report on government-authorised information. US courts have halted or reversed numerous presidential measures, something that would be unthinkable in China’s party-dominated judiciary.

Isaac Stone Fish, the founder of a consulting firm, specializing in China, said: “America might face the worst crisis of its history, orders of magnitudes worse than it is now, and it will still be more free, more open, and liberal than China under Xi.”

The professor notes that although many intellectuals in China were shocked to see US universities capitulate to government demands concerning diversity and inclusion practices and free speech on university grounds, in the East, the top universities are publicly controlled inherently. Administrators, who are appointed by the state, “cannot refuse. They dare not to be disobedient.”

Nevertheless, people in the US are starting to take precautions previously confined to more authoritarian countries. An academic at an American college who was previously outspoken on US-China issues declined to be interviewed for this piece. He said: “Honestly, I am scared of the censorship in the US: I genuinely feel more comfortable to criticise Xi these days than say anything bad