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As the United States grapples with the upheaval unleashed by the Trump administration, many Chinese people are finding they can relate to what many Americans are going through.<\/p>\n
They are saying it feels something like the Cultural Revolution, the period known as \u201cthe decade of turmoil.\u201d The young aides Elon Musk has sent to dismantle the US government reminded some Chinese of the Red Guards whom Mao Zedong enlisted to destroy the bureaucracy at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. Upon hearing President Donald Trump\u2019s musing about serving a third term, they joked that China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping, must be saying, \u201cI know how to do it\u201d \u2013 he secured one in 2022 by engineering a constitutional change.<\/p>\n
The United States helped China modernize and expand its economy in the hope that China would become more like America \u2013 more democratic and more open. Now for some Chinese, the United States is looking more and more like China.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing from an authoritarian state, we know that dictatorship is not just a system \u2013 it is, at its core, the pursuit of power,\u201d Wang Jian, a journalist, wrote in a post on the social platform X criticizing Trump. \u201cWe also know that the Cultural Revolution was about dismantling institutions to expand control.\u201d<\/p>\n
For these Chinese, who strive for democratic values but contend with an authoritarian state, their role model is tearing itself down. They are expressing their alarm in interviews, articles and social media comments that range in emotion from disappointment and anger to sardonic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeacon of democracy, 1776-2025,\u201d wrote a commenter on a post by the official Weibo social media account of the US Embassy in China.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re witnessing things they thought could happen only in China: sycophantic official announcements, intimidation of the media and top entrepreneurs vying for favor from the leadership, not to mention a president who calls himself a king.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m overwhelmed with a sense of familiarity \u2013 it feels so much like China,\u201d Zhang Wenmin, an investigative journalist known by her pen name, Jiang Xue, told me. Zhang was forced to leave China because of her work and moved to the United States in 2023. \u201cI\u2019ve just gotten out of the frying pan and into the fire,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Of course, the two countries are fundamentally different.<\/p>\n
China is a one-party state lacking in three pillars of the American system: liberty, democracy and the rule of law. Millions of Chinese died during the Cultural Revolution, and tens of millions were persecuted. What\u2019s happening in the United States is far from that. \u201cIt\u2019s not exactly parallel,\u201d Ian Johnson, an American journalist who has been writing about China for decades, told me. \u201cBut historical parallels are never exact because history doesn\u2019t really repeat itself.\u201d The American system is tearing itself apart with no outside pressure, he said, and this is similar to what the Communist Party did at the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.<\/p>\n
After the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed nearly 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 accountable.<\/p>\n
These are the Chinese who suffered the most when Xi smothered efforts to make China a more open and democratic society, and they\u2019re also the most disappointed at what\u2019s happening in the United States.<\/p>\n
They have been shocked by the abrupt changes in US policy under Trump. Most striking is the language government agencies have used in social media postings. The tone, people say, sounds like Chinese Communist Party propaganda.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven the CCP\u2019s embassy posts, with all its propaganda, doesn\u2019t spend every single day obsessively praising Xi Jinping,\u201d Deng Haiyan, a former police officer turned critic of the Chinese government, wrote on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d think People\u2019s Daily had moved into the US Consulate,\u201d he wrote, referring to the official newspaper for the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
The official Weibo account of the US Embassy in China, which has 3.5 million followers, used to be a platform for the US government to spread American values and reliable information. Chinese who share those values would sometimes use the comment sections of the account to vent about their own government.<\/p>\n
R. Nicholas Burns, who was the US ambassador in China until January, talked about the importance of using social media to interact with the Chinese public. \u201cOne of the major preoccupations of our mission,\u201d he said in a speech in 2023, \u201cis to try to tell the truth about American society, American history, US-China relations to the Chinese people.\u201d<\/p>\n
That truth telling, he added, was meant to counter a distorted version of the United States from the Chinese official media. The Weibo account was intended as a Chinese-language bulletin board about American values.<\/p>\n
In the past month, many of the embassy\u2019s Weibo posts, which overlap with some of the posts on its X account, were flooded with angry comments from Chinese users expressing disappointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cShame on you!\u201d many Weibo users with IP addresses in China commented on posts about the US policies toward Ukraine.<\/p>\n
On a post about remarks Trump made about human rights, one user wrote: \u201cAnd you think you\u2019re worthy of talking about human rights? You betrayed Ukraine!\u201d<\/p>\n
The changes of both content and style on the Weibo account led one commenter to tease the account\u2019s social media editor: \u201cBlink twice if you\u2019ve been kidnapped.\u201d The embassy press office declined to comment.<\/p>\n
For many Chinese, the chaos in Washington is driven by a familiar impulse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way to dismantle America\u2019s \u2018deep state\u2019 is through a \u2018Cultural Revolution,\u2019\u201d Zhang Qianfan, a professor of law at Peking University, wrote in a widely circulated article about the erosion of American democracy. \u201cThe Cultural Revolution brings neither honesty nor efficiency \u2013 only the demolition of the rule of law essential to everyone\u2019s survival.\u201d<\/p>\n
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)<\/p>\n
The characteristics of authoritarian leaders, such as surrounding themselves with loyalists and trying to control the media, are not unique to China.<\/p>\n
During the Cultural Revolution, Mao promoted a semiliterate peasant to the office of vice premier and a low-level cadre at a textile mill to be his deputy at age 38.<\/p>\n
For his third term, Xi has surrounded himself with loyalists, many of whom did not go to elite Chinese universities. Neither do they have lengthy experience working in the central government, unlike members of the previous two Chinese administrations.<\/p>\n
Last week, when the US Embassy in China posted on its Weibo account that the White House would pick the media outlets allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, a user in the southwestern city Chongqing commented, \u201cSelectively allowing certain media outlets to conduct interviews \u2013 such a familiar tactic.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Chinese, one of the most astonishing aspects is how fast Trump seems to be building a cult of personality.<\/p>\n
After he showed off hats that said \u201cTrump was right about everything,\u201d a user on X wrote in Chinese: \u201cMao Zedong of America has been born! Long live the great leader Chairman Trump \u2013 long live, long live, long long live!\u201d<\/p>\n
Li Weiao, a Beijing-based journalist, posted a video clip on Weibo that shows Trump enjoying a standing ovation at his first Cabinet meeting in his second term. \u201cI think I truly underestimated the dark side of human nature,\u201d he wrote on Weibo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rhythm of this applause feels so familiar,\u201d a lawyer commented on Li\u2019s post. Another commenter wrote: \u201cJust like North Korea and its friend,\u201d referring to China.<\/p>\n
In a comment on an episode of my Chinese-language podcast, a YouTube viewer wrote a parody of a White House announcement in the style of Communist Party propaganda.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire Republican Party and all of America must unite even more closely around the White House Central Committee with President Trump at its core, holding high the great banner of American-style capitalism,\u201d the user wrote. \u201cWe must fully implement Trump\u2019s New Era American Capitalism Thought, stay united in purpose, uphold tradition while innovating, forge ahead with determination, and fight tirelessly to achieve the great MAGA goal!\u201d<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n