‘TikTok refugees’ flock to another (heavily censored) Chinese app

The threat of a ban on TikTok this Sunday has young Americans migrating to an unexpected destination: RedNote, another Chinese-owned app, which is heavily censored and used almost exclusively by Chinese-speakers.

American users who call themselves “TikTok refugees” have signed up for RedNote in droves, making it the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store in the United States over the weekend.

The trend began after the Supreme Court on Friday indicated that it was likely to rule in favor of a law that forces ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, to divest ownership of the app or face it being shut down on Jan. 19.

TikTok has challenged the law’s constitutionality on the grounds that it will “silence the speech” of Americans who use the video app.

The court’s stance has many fearing that the ban will take effect Sunday, the day before Donald Trump, who has pledged to “save” the app after previously calling it a tool of Chinese disinformation, is sworn in as president.

There is still significant uncertainty about how, or if, a ban would work.

But instead of waiting for the final ruling, or opting for an American-owned alternative, some TikTok users have protested by signing up for the most readily available Chinese-owned alternative: an app called Xiaohongshu in Chinese, literally meaning “little red book,” but known as RedNote outside China.

It is owned by Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology, a private company.

The new American users are arriving at the app with TikTok dances, memes about Chinese spying and requests for Mandarin lessons. Chinese users have welcomed them with offers to help translate and a touch of schadenfreude that Americans are jumping into the “great fire wall” of Chinese internet censorship to escape a likely federal ban.

“Fear not, all kinds of Chinese social media is here to give you shelter, even if it comes with some side of confusion,” a user called “Everyone loves Yu Qing” said in an English-language guide for app newbies struggling with the “culture shock” of joining a made-for-China app.

The sudden migration to RedNote can’t be easily quantified and is likely to include a tiny fraction of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok.

But the shift shows how the ban-or-sell law may set up American policymakers for years of “whack-a-mole” with various apps that violate requirements not to be controlled by a foreign adversary, said Daria Impiombato, China analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank.

“We’ve probably spent too much energy worrying about the single app,” Impiombato said. “Once you have the capacity to build those algorithms and those apps, it doesn’t take very long to create a TikTok or something different.”

Originally launched in Shanghai as a shopping platform for women, Xiaohongshu has grown to become one of China’s most popular short-video apps, with more than 300 million users as of July 2024.

Like Instagram in the United States, it is often the go-to choice for travel tips, restaurant reviews and makeup tutorials - as well as for businesses marketing themselves to younger audiences.

Despite RedNote’s Chinese name, connoting in English the “Little Red Book” of sayings from Communist China’s first leader, Mao Zedong, the app is largely apolitical.

The company has never explained the origins of its name, but Chinese media outlets have reported that Mao Wenchao, the company’s founder, chose it to pay homage to the colors of his college and former employer - Stanford University and Bain Capital respectively - rather than the book of Mao quotations carried by young revolutionaries in the tumultuous 1960s.

“It’s really all about eating, drinking and being merry,” said Ying Yin, a researcher at the University of Cyberjaya in Malaysia, who has studied Xiaohongshu’s overseas users.

But the app enforces the same strict censorship found on every Chinese social media platform, analysts say, and its focus on shopping and entertainment means it is often even more active in blocking content seen as too serious for the app’s target audience, experts said.

“It won’t be like Facebook and Instagram. There are lots of topics that are banned on the platform, even things like health care and finance,” Yin said.

Xiaohongshu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unlike TikTok, which operates under different content controls than ByteDance’s China-only version, Douyin, RedNote is the same app available to Chinese users on Chinese app stores.

The company’s team of in-house censors bans or limits discussion related to thousands of “sensitive” terms, including 546 nicknames for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a leaked database published by China Digital Times, a California-based website focused on Chinese censorship, in 2022.

Even Chinese state media noted that Xiaohongshu would find it difficult to adjust its censorship regime to handle American TikTok teens. “The content posted by American users is more diversified, which to some extent increases the difficulty of content review and management,” the state-run China News Service said in a commentary.

Within China, TikTok’s global success has long been the envy of social media rivals. Platforms such as the ubiquitous WeChat, microblog Weibo and video site Kuaishou boast huge user numbers and often innovative designs and functionality, but few have been able to follow ByteDance in attracting international users beyond the Chinese diaspora.

Beijing has not ruled out a sale of TikTok by ByteDance, but the government has repeatedly opposed what it has cast as an attempt to steal Chinese technology.

As early as 2020, soon after Trump initially proposed restricting TikTok, China’s Ministry of Commerce changed export restrictions to give the government veto power over the transfer of TikTok’s core algorithms.

But for now, China’s somewhat puzzled “Xiaohongshu natives” have embraced the new “TikTok refugees.”

In live chats and in comment threads, Chinese users are telling Americans about how they picked their English names or asking for help with their English homework.

Some in China hailed the influx as a historic chance for young people in China and America to connect. “In an instant, someone may discover a business opportunity, meet a like-minded person, or even suddenly post a year later that he married an American he met on Xiaohongshu,” one Chinese user wrote.

Others were more cautious. “Let’s see how many Americans can put up with this censorship system,” another post read. “After a time, they’ll for sure all be gone.”

“Many people are joining RedNote as an act of defiance or to challenge the U.S. government, but how many of them genuinely want to engage with Chinese users or learn about Chinese culture?” asked Olivia Wang, a 26-year-old from Beijing who works in marketing.

Wang added that the trend will last only if Xiaohongshu secures government support to adapt for international users. “That’s the baseline for survival,” she said.

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Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.