What is Xiaohongshu or RedNote, the Chinese social media platform that US TikTok ‘refugees’ are flocking to?

Acts of protest

The US last April brought in a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its American assets by January 19 this year, or face a nationwide ban. The law, which received bipartisan support at the time, said urgent measures were needed because ByteDance was effectively controlled by the Chinese government, which could use TikTok to harvest sensitive information about Americans, and to spread covert disinformation.

Despite multiple US investors signalling their interest in acquiring TikTok, ByteDance has thus far refused to divest. The US Supreme Court last week “seemed inclined to uphold” the law, The New York Times reported. This means that TikTok will almost certainly be banned in the US by the end of this week.

This looming ban has sent some 170 million TikTok users in the US looking for alternatives. And Xiaohongshu has emerged as the runaway favourite, the irony of which is not lost among many observers. “It’s definitely funny that American teenagers are protesting the looming TikTok ban by using a much more culturally Chinese app,” Ryan Broderick, a commentator on web culture, told Al Jazeera.

The self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees” embracing Xiaohongshu have said in interviews and on posts on the app that they do not share Washington’s concerns about TikTok, and its ties to China.

China’s Instagram

Xiaohongshu is a social networking and e-commerce platform founded by Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao in 2013.

“The app is especially popular among women in their 20s and 30s, and its long comment threads have become a popular source of information for people to swap questions about everyday concerns, similar to Reddit,” The NYT reported. Users often utilise the platform as a de-facto search engine for product, travel and restaurant recommendations, as well as makeup and skincare tutorials, according to the Associated Press.

Until late December, 85% of the platform’s traffic was from China, according to website traffic tracker Similarweb as quoted by The NYT. Many have referred to Xiaohongshu as “China’s answer to Instagram”.

But despite having more than 300 million active users, it has thus far remained much smaller than other Chinese platforms such as Douyin (the Chinese counterpart of TikTok) and Weibo (China’s answer to X). The latest surge in popularity outside Chinese shores, however, might change things.

Cultural chaos

Chinese regulations require users to register on social media platforms with Chinese phone numbers. These platforms are also subject to government censorship, especially on certain sensitive political matters. This is why Chinese tech companies typically create domestic and foreign versions of their apps — like Douyin (domestic) and TikTok (international), both of which are owned by ByteDance.

This has not been the case with Xiaohongshu so far. “At the moment, RedNote doesn’t seem to be siloing Chinese content or requiring users to have a Chinese phone number, so it’s turned into a sort of fun cultural chaos on the app, an experience that never really even happened on TikTok,” Broderick said.

Xiaohongshu has thus brought American social media users closer than ever before to their Chinese counterparts. Trends from China are catching on in the US like never before. And amidst growing geopolitical uncertainties, Xiaohongshu is enabling cordial people-to-people contact that was previously unseen.

For instance, one American user “Fern” said: “We need to talk about you guys [Chinese users] blowing up my video about moving to Rednote to 50,000 new followers in less than 24 hours. You guys are insane”.

A momentary craze?

Censorship, however, is a real issue. As one Chinese user posted on Xiaohongshu, “Friendly reminder: On Chinese social media platforms, please do not mention sensitive topics such as politics, religion, and drugs!!! Please adhere to the One China policy and reject pornography, gambling, and drugs”. Time will tell how American users will adjust to Chinese norms, and heavy-handed government censors.

Then there is the monetisation issue. TikTok and Xiaohongshu have very different monetisation strategies, which experts say will mean that those migrating from TikTok might not maintain the same revenue stream on their new platform of choice. Xiaohongshu, notably, positions itself as a shopping platform, with most creators earning revenue through paid partnerships rather than streaming numbers themselves.

That said, the migration from TikTok to Xiaohongshu makes one thing clear: US social media platforms are simply not appealing to the younger generations. As Broderick put it, “It’s a good way of letting Silicon Valley know that their products are stagnating and no amount of federal bans are going to make young people excited about Meta products again.”