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re <<Yikes! What are they thinking? Are they thinking?>>
The husband, 'M' in my postings of round-table e-mails over the years, was and remains all anti-China-anti--China-anti-China, and / but, except when it comes to knee-replacement surgery and such, indubitably, not thinking as well as ought to
For TikTok Refugees, RedNote Spring Is Too Sweet to Last
Something bizarre and beautiful is happening as Chinese and American youth break barriers online. It’s only a matter of time before political reality bites. Catherine Thorbecke 17 January 2025 at 04:00 GMT+8 The crackdown will inevitably come.
Photographer: Anna Kurth/AFP/Getty Images
I wrote about Chinese app Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in the US, months ago because it offered a window into the trends driving Gen Z culture in China, with lessons for policymakers and business leaders from Beijing to Washington. The app is now also allowing us to watch American youth culture in action.
With the law banning TikTok set to take effect in just days, swaths of its American users have protested by joining Xiaohongshu rebelling against their government’s crackdown. US downloads of Xiaohongshu during the second week of January are up more than 30 times compared to the same period last year, and grew 20-fold on the previous week, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. This week, it topped the Apple and Google Play US app store charts.
Something rare and beautiful is happening on the platform as Chinese and American youth break barriers online — helping each other with homework, comparing local grocery prices, or just exchanging photos of their pets. Chinese users have welcomed these so-called “TikTok refugees” by sharing advice on how to navigate the Mandarin interface or offering tips on topics to avoid behind the Great Firewall. US users have shamed each other into featuring Chinese subtitles on their posts to include their new internet friends. Language-learning app Duolingo said Thursday that the number of US users trying to learn Mandarin has rocketed 216% compared to the same period last year.
The digital interactions have been surprisingly wholesome: Young people who have long been taught to view those from other side as a “threat” are finding common interests. Opening Xiaohongshu this week, I was greeted by a Chinese user reading off an English prompt welcoming “friends from TikTok.” For so long, we haven’t really been able to connect or talk to each other, but now we finally can, and it feels so special, he said. As tensions between Beijing and Washington mount, it felt like there must be something policymakers could learn from this most unlikely cultural exchange.
But it’s only a matter of time before political reality strikes. The Xiaohongshu Spring won’t last.
National security fears over TikTok due to its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., are only magnified on Xiaohongshu. TikTok is at least a separate app from ByteDance’s China version, Douyin, whereas Xiaohongshu is a singular platform. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities are unlikely to welcome swarms of young Americans culturally influencing its youth. We’ve seen this play out before: In 2021, Beijing blocked the audio app Clubhouse after a brief period of exchange when discussions emergedon topics ranging from social freedoms in Hong Kong to “reeducation” of the Uyghur Muslim minority.
Xiaohongshu may hope to leverage this influx of American users into sustainable business growth, but the company also reportedly has eyes on an initial public offering in Hong Kong. It can’t afford to upset regulators, especially as the path is complicated by Beijing’s data protection laws.
Americans also may not be familiar with the extent of China’s internet censorship regime. Cat photos and makeup tutorials may be permitted on Xiaohongshu, but searches for “Tiananmen Square” yield no results on historical events (TikTok gave me video of the “Tank Man”). Those equating Beijing’s internet policies to America’s — as broken as they may be — are in for a rude awakening. And they should recognize that their new Chinese friends participating in political discourse are at greater risk when a crackdown inevitably comes. Community guidelines are currently only in Mandarin.
RedNote’s US rise also comes amid increasingly heated tech rivalry. Incoming President Donald Trump is set to fill his cabinet with China hawks. Business leaders that once spoke on the importance of US-China ties have been silent. A rash of hacks from China, targeting telecom giants and even the Treasury Department, have put Washington on high alert about cyber-espionage plots. Animosity shows no signs of tempering. As Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a Trump ally representing Arkansas, recently warned: “If you get in the ring on China’s behalf, you should expect to be punched.”
Still, there are lessons for policymakers and the US tech sector from the TikTok refugees. Many of these young people have been blasted for their cavalier stance regarding data privacy risks, especially as users flood TikTok in its dying days offering to hand over their information to China. But it’s not that they’re naïve: Many who grew up online and in a post- Cambridge Analytica world feel resigned to a reality where participating in digital life means giving up enormous amounts of data to Big Tech, advertisers and authorities.
They’re questioning why it has to be this way. Long before the memesabout connecting with “my Chinese spy,” there were memes about “my FBI agent” — flicking at the belief that the US government covertly surveils social media.
These migrants to Xiaohongshu recognize that their personal data is a currency for Silicon Valley. After myriad scandals involving US tech giants over the years, it’s striking that users would rather log onto platforms owned by foreign adversaries than freely hand their data to Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. US lawmakers, meanwhile, should realize that their whack-a-mole regulatory moves for digital security and platform integrity are porous. It’s time to try another approach.
