Like the United States struggling with the unrest released by the Trump government, many Chinese people notice that they can relate to what many Americans are going through.
They say it feels like the cultural revolution, the period known as 'the decade of unrest'. The young assistants Elon Musk sent to dismantle the American government, recalled some Chinese of the red guards that Mao Zedong hired to destroy the bureaucracy at the height of the cultural revolution. When President Trump hears about serving a third term, they joked that the Chinese leader, XI Jinping, must say: “I know how to do it” – he has insured an insured in 2022 by engineering a constitutional change.
The United States helped China to modernize and expand its economy in the hope that China would become more on America – more democratic and more open. Now for some Chinese, the United States are more and more like China.
“Coming from an authoritarian state, we know that dictatorship is not only a system – it is basically the pursuit of power,” wrote Wang Jian, a journalist, in an X post that Mr Trump criticized. “We also know that the cultural revolution was about dismantling institutions to expand control.”
For these Chinese, who strive for democratic values but fight with an authoritarian state, their role model tears itself off. They express their alarm in interviews, articles and comments on social media that vary in emotion from disappointment and anger to Sardonic.
“Beacon of Democracy, 1776-2025”, wrote a commentator on a message from the official Weibo Social Media account of the American Embassy in China.
They witness things that they thought they could only happen in China: Sycophantic official announcements, intimidation of the media and top entrepreneurs fighting for the favor of leadership, not to mention a president who calls himself a king.
“I am overwhelmed by a feeling of fame – it feels so much to China,” said Zhang Wenmin, an investigative journalist known under her pseudonym, Jiang Xue, me. Mrs. Zhang was forced to leave China because of her work and moved to the United States in 2023. “I just got out of the frying pan and in the fire,” she said.
Of course the two countries are fundamentally different.
China is a one -party state that is missing in three pillars of the American system: freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Millions of Chinese died during the cultural revolution and tens of millions were persecuted. What happens in the United States is far from that. “It's not exactly parallel,” said Ian Johnson, an American journalist who has been writing about China for decades. “But historical parallels are never exactly because history is not really repeating itself.” The American system tears itself apart without external pressure, he said, and this is similar to what the Communist Party did at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
After the cultural revolution, which destroyed almost all institutions in China, the country tried to build something like those American foundations. Despite official restrictions, lawyers, journalists and entrepreneurs built a budding civil society that tried to hold the government responsible.
These are the Chinese who suffered the most when Mr. XI made efforts to make China a more open and democratic society, and they are also the most disappointed in what happens in the United States.
They are shocked by the abrupt changes in American policy under President Trump. The most striking thing is that the language of the government agencies used in social media messages. The tone, people say, sounds like propaganda of the Chinese communist party.
“Even the embassy posts of the CCP, with all its propaganda, does not spend obsessive Xi Jinping every day,” wrote Deng Haiyan, a former police officer who became a critic of the Chinese government, on X.
“You would think that the daily people from people had moved to the American consulate,” he wrote, referring to the official newspaper for the Chinese Communist Party.
The official Weibo report of the American embassy in China, which has 3.5 million followers, used to be a platform for the American government to spread American values and reliable information. Chinese who share those values sometimes use the comments sections of the account to air over their own government.
R. Nicholas Burns, who was the American ambassador in China until January, spoke about the importance of using social media to communicate with the Chinese public. “One of the most important preoccupations of our mission,” he said in a speech in 2023, “is trying to tell the truth about American society, American history, the relations between the US and China to the Chinese people.”
Telling that truth, he added, was intended to combat a distorted version of the United States of the Chinese official media. The Weibo account was intended as a Chinese-language Bulletin Board about American values.
In the past month, many of the Weibo reports of the embassy, which overlap with some of the messages on the X account, were flooded with angry comments from Chinese users who expressed disappointment.
“Shame!” Many Weibo users with IP addresses in China commented on reports about American policy towards Ukraine.
On a message about comments that Mr Trump made about human rights, a user wrote: “And do you think you are worth talking about human rights? You have betrayed Ukraine! “
The changes to both content and style to the Weibo account led a commentator to tease the social media editor of the account: “Clean twice if you are kidnapped.” The press office of the embassy refused to comment.
For many Chinese people, the chaos in Washington is powered by a well -known boost.
“The only way to dismantle the 'deep state' of America is through a 'cultural revolution',” Zhang Qianfan, a professor of law at the University of Beijing, wrote in a widespread article about the erosion of American democracy. “The cultural revolution does neither honesty nor efficiency – only the demolition of the rule of law that is essential for everyone's survival.”
The characteristics of authoritarian leaders, such as surrounding themselves with loyalists and trying to control the media, are not unique to China.
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao promoted a Semiliterate Boer to the office of Vice Prime Minister and a low level Cadre in a textile factory to be his representative at the age of 38.
For his third term, Mr. XI surrounded with loyalists, many of whom did not go to Chinese universities. Nor do they have long -term experience in the central government, in contrast to members of the previous two Chinese administrations.
Last week, when the American embassy in China placed on its Weibo account, the White House would choose the media who were allowed to participate in the Presidential Press Pool, a user said in the southwestern city of Chongqing: “Selectively allow certain media interviews – such a well -known tactics.”
For the Chinese, one of the most amazing aspects is how fast Mr. Trump seems to build a cult of personality.
After he had shown hats that said “Trump was right about everything”, a user wrote on X in Chinese: “Mao Zedong of America was born! Long live the great leader chairman Trump – Long, long alive, long long life!”
Li Weiao, a journalist based in Beijing, posted a video clip on Weibo who shows that Mr. Trump enjoys a standing ovation during his first cabinet meeting in his second term. “I think I really underestimated the dark side of human nature,” he wrote on Weibo.
“The rhythm of this applause feels so familiar,” a lawyer commented on Mr Li's post. Another commentator wrote: “Just like Noord -Korea and his friend”, referring to China.
In a remark about an episode of my Chinese podcast, a YouTube viewer wrote a parody of an announcement of the White House in the style of the propaganda of the Communist Party.
“The entire Republican Party and the whole of America have to unite even more closely around the central committee of the White House with President Trump in the core, making the great banner of American style capitalism high,” the user wrote. “We have to fully implement the new era of Trump that American capitalism thought, remain united in goal, maintain tradition while we innovate, continue with determination and tireless fighting to achieve the big Maga goal!”
