RedNote: App from China as a new alternative to Tiktok?

In the USA, around half of the population uses Tiktok. Now the popular app is threatened with closure, as early as Sunday. If the planned law comes into force, Tiktok will immediately deactivate access to the app in the USA, the Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday. The American government fears Chinese influence or espionage via the app.

Tiktok users, however, trust the Chinese parent company behind the app. To demonstrate this, hundreds of thousands of them have opened accounts on RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, in recent days.

Like the user Star404. The young woman describes herself as an “American refugee” on her profile and already has 44,000 followers. In the video she says that although she is a bit disoriented on RedNote, she already loves it. On Facebook or Instagram she definitely won’t dodge if Tiktok is banned: “Everything but Meta!”. The video has 100,000 views.

From one China app to another

RedNote’s global growth is a defiant trend. It was fueled by the platform itself, a PR stunt under the slogan “Tiktok refugees”. Hardly anyone expected its success; RedNote is conspicuously keeping a low profile and does not answer media inquiries. In fact, a kind of digital refugee movement is underway. According to the Reuters news agency, half a million of the 170 million American Tiktok users have already migrated to RedNote as a preventive measure.

As a result, RedNote has temporarily made it to the top of the download charts in the USA, and the phenomenon extends beyond the United States: Xiaohongshu was also at the top of Apple’s download charts in Switzerland and Germany on Wednesday. This is the name of the application in Chinese. Translated as the “little red book,” this was also the name of the Mao Bible, the collection of the most important teachings of Great Chairman Mao Zedong.

But RedNote is not a political propaganda app, it’s about lifestyle, travel, beauty, entertainment, product recommendations. You can share texts, images and videos there, call each other, take part in live streams and shop.

RedNote – or Xiaohongshu – was actually designed for Chinese users and is particularly popular with young Chinese women. Over 300 million people use the app. There is a single platform, not two separate ones, for China and the rest of the world, as is the case with Tiktok or the social app WeChat. Although you can change the language of the RedNote app from Chinese to English, most posts are in Chinese.

At least until recently. Now there is the American teacher Daniel, who teaches other “Tiktok refugees” a few words of Chinese. A young Kazakh woman named Yana Kim explains in a video how to use RedNote and what content you have to be careful with because “China is a very conservative country.” In the comments, someone warns: Politics, religion, pornography, drugs, gambling – these topics are forbidden.

“I love my Chinese spy”

But that doesn’t stop Chinese and Americans on the platform from talking to each other. They ask each other questions in posts and comments. An American woman asks how high the tuition fees are in China. “Is it true that in the USA you have to pay a large sum of money if you call an ambulance?” writes a user from China, an American responds: “That’s right, 5 years ago it cost 900 dollars and I owe the money I still tell them.” A user from China asks whether people in the USA really only work five days a week and eight hours a day.

A cultural exchange can be observed that seems like the beginning of a friendship between nations – at a time when the Chinese media is full of anti-American propaganda and a new Trumpian trade war is looming. The lifestyle app RedNote has suddenly become a place where social problems are discussed and the crazy excesses of the great power conflict are mocked. “I love my Chinese spy,” former Tiktok users joke, Chinese people respond in the comments with “Please give me your data back!”

But it is uncertain whether RedNote will become the new Tiktok or fizzle out as a short-lived trend. Only a small percentage of American Tiktok users have left. If RedNote wants to achieve sustainable global success, it needs to become more international. The strict censorship rules in China are likely to soon scare away new American users. The censors will probably intervene soon. Because the open exchange and critical debate that is now taking place runs counter to the interests of the Chinese state, which always wants to maintain control.

But even if RedNote does not prove to be a real alternative to Tiktok, the phenomenon demonstrates the limits of a Tiktok ban. The most popular digital applications are now increasingly coming from China. The shopping apps Shein and Temu also show this. This reality cannot be combated with blanket bans, but it can be regulated.