Red Note: Chinese users react to US ‘TikTok refugees’

The ban on TikTok has connected Chinese and American citizens like never before, as they swap jokes and memes in what one user described as a “historic moment.”

It’s all unfolding on a popular Chinese social media app called RedNote, or Xiaohongshu (literally translated as Little Red Book), which doesn’t have the usual internet firewalls that protect China from the rest of the world. separates from

It has been drawing itself. American “Tik Tok Refugees” Finding a new home on the internet – despite the fact that their own government is trying to ban TikTok due to national security concerns.

Americans now find themselves in direct contact with 300 million Mandarin speakers in China and elsewhere — while in the real world, Beijing braces for a tumultuous Trump presidency that will strain its fragile relationship with Washington. can

At the heart of the US ban are fears that China is using TikTok to spy on Americans.

The app has faced accusations that user data is ending up in the hands of the Chinese government – due to a Beijing law requiring local companies to “cooperate, assist and support government intelligence work”. Need TikTok denies that this ever happened, or that it will

But that prospect doesn’t seem to bother some US users – 700,000 new users have signed up to RedNote in the past two days, making it the most downloaded free app in the US App Store.

Definitelynotchippy, a new RedNote user, said, “The reason our government is telling us that they’re banning TikTok is because they’re insisting that it belongs to you, the Chinese people, the government, whatever. Owned.”

He explains why he’s on RedNote: “Many of us are smarter than that though when we decided to ditch our government and download a real Chinese app. About our government and China To get to know and hang out with you guys.”

TikTok, although owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is headquartered in Singapore and says it is independently run. In fact, China’s version of TikTok is another app called Douyin. RedNote, on the other hand, is a Chinese company based in Shanghai and one of the few social media apps available both in China and abroad.

So Washington’s fear of TikTok will extend to RedNote as well.

That’s why US users on RedNote are calling themselves “Chinese spies” — continuing a TikTok trend where people are saying goodbye to their “personal Chinese spies” who have allegedly been monitoring them for years. is

RedNote is now full of posts where former TikTok users are looking for alternatives. One post read: “I’m looking for my Chinese spy. I miss you. Please help me find him.”

And Chinese consumers have responded: “I’m here!”

Honest, funny conversations on RedNote may not be what Chinese President Xi Jinping had in mind when he talked about “strengthening people-to-people cultural exchanges” between China and the United States.

But it’s certainly happening as enthusiastic Chinese users welcome curious Americans to the app.

“You don’t even need to travel abroad, you can just talk to foreigners here,” said one Chinese RedNote user in a video that has received more than 6,000 likes.

“But it’s honestly crazy, no one would have expected that one day we’d meet like this, talk like this openly.”

Food, streaming shows and jobs have been the most popular topics: “Is life in America what it seems? [the US TV show] friend?”

Other Chinese users demanded a “tax” for using the platform – cat photos.

“Cat tax from California,” reads one post in response. “Here’s my offer – Shorthair is a boy named Bob and Calico is a girl named Marley.”

Still using other platforms to ask Americans for help with their English homework.

One post read: “Dear TikTok refugees, can you tell me the answer to question 53? Is the answer T (True) or F (False)?”

Help was immediate: nearly 500 people have since responded.

A flood of new US users seems to have taken RedNote by storm – reports suggest the company is hiring English moderators.

And others are trying to cash in on RedNote’s newfound US stardom, too: Language-learning app Duolingo presented a graph showing a 216% jump in its user base compared to this time last year. .

RedNote’s growing popularity is not guaranteed to last.

There’s no reason to assume it won’t suffer a setback for the same reasons as TikTok: There are concerns it could be used by China to spy on Americans.

It’s unclear how long Beijing will remain open to such unfettered exchanges — control over the Internet is key to its repressive regime.

The irony of the situation was flagged by a Chinese user, who posted: “Don’t we have a (fire) wall? How can so many foreigners get in, when clearly I can’t leave? “

In general, Chinese Internet users have been unable to communicate directly with foreigners. Global platforms like Twitter and Instagram and search engines like Google are blocked in China, although people use VPNs to bypass these restrictions. Sensitive topics – from history to dissent – or anything seen as critical of China’s government and ruling Communist Party are increasingly censored.

It’s unclear how much RedNote is censored — it’s mostly used by young and middle-aged women in China, where they share photos and videos. This is not unlike another Chinese app, Weibo, where discussions and airing complaints are far more common, often leading to the removal of posts.

But a handful of new RedNote users say they’ve already received reports that their posts violated the guidelines, including one who asked in a post if the app was “LGBT friendly.” .

Another said he asked “What? [sic] Chinese think about homosexuals?” and received a similar report, that they had violated the guidelines of the “public moral order”.

And Chinese users keep reminding Americans on the app not to “mention sensitive topics like politics, religion and drugs.”

A Chinese user also advised them to stick to the “one-China policy,” the diplomatic pillar of US-China relations — whereby the US recognizes formal relations with China rather than Taiwan, and with There are official ties, the self-governing island claims Beijing. His own

The US government has not yet commented on the RedNote, nor has Beijing.

But Chinese state media seems enthusiastic about it, with the Global Times even interviewing an American user who said she would “like to interact with Chinese users.”

RedNote’s US fate is anyone’s guess – but for now, at least online, the US-China rivalry is taking a break. Thanks for the cat photos.