As the fate of TikTok hangs in the balance, US TikTok users are flocking to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, also called RedNote – making it the top downloaded app in the US. Some of the “TikTok refugees,” as they call themselves, say the TikTok alternative, a Chinese app, is being chosen in protest of the TikTok ban. Here’s what you need to know about Xiaohongshu.
What is Xiaohongshu, the Chinese app that TikTok refugees’ poured to?
It is a lifestyle social media app which allows users to post short videos, photos and texts, and it also includes functions like live-streaming and shopping.
A rare wave of US-China camaraderie broke out online in recent days as “refugees” from the popular short video platform TikTok poured onto a Chinese social media platform to protest a likely ban on the service.
They were met with surprise, curiosity and in-jokes on Xiaohongshu – literally, “Little Red Book” – whose users saw English-language posts take over feeds almost overnight.
Americans introduced themselves with hashtag TikTok refugees, ask me anything attitude and posting photos of their pets to pay their hosts’ “cat tax.” Parents swapped stories about raising kids and Swifties from both countries, of course, quickly found each other.
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It’s a rare moment of direct contact between two online worlds that are usually kept apart by language, corporate boundaries, and China’s strict system of online censorship that blocks access to nearly all international media and social media services.
Why are Americans downloading a Chinese app?
Chinese and American users rarely find themselves in the same online spaces, in large part because China’s “Great Firewall” blocks internationally popular platforms like Instagram and X. Even TikTok blocks users in China, directing them to its onshore sister platform Douyin.
But as the deadline approached for a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company, some began migrating to Xiaohongshu.
“When they tell us you can’t have a Chinese app anymore, we go straight to another Chinese app,” said Katie Lawson, a farmer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has posted videos of her chickens and saved many recipes from the app. “We’re going to go explore that country and their values ourselves. We’re going to go straight to the source.”