RedNote Is the U.S.-China Peace Talks We Need

The U.S. TikTok ban, brought on by government concern over the company’s Chinese ownership, has been a messy whirlwind of updates for the app’s users. The company circled through announcements that it will be banned, it might not be banned, the Supreme Court might stop the ban, the Supreme Court upheld the ban. The platform was banned two and half hours before its Jan. 19 deadline to transfer ownership to an American owner, but was then reinstated 14 hours later. As of now, it may still be banned two and a half months down the line. As a result, many users, frustrated by the government’s interference with their beloved social media platform, decided to stick it to Congress and show how little they care about the government’s concerns of foreign government data mining and ran straight to Xiaohongshu.

Known in English as RedNote, the Chinese social media app became the most-downloaded free app in the Apple App Store in the week before the ban, as self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees” sought out a new place to find content. Marketing intelligence app Sensor Tower reported that U.S. mobile downloads increased more than 20 times in the week beginning Jan. 8 compared to the previous week, and were up 30 times more compared to the same time period last year. The app, which functions similarly to Pinterest with a short-form, vertical video element, wasn’t even localized to English at the beginning of last week, with much of the interface still in Mandarin, but by Jan. 15, the company had rolled out English translations. If the U.S. government was saying that there was a Chinese threat, the answer seemed to be to get even more Chinese. Commenters asked Chinese users how to translate English slang like “ho is you magical” and “ate” into Mandarin. Duolingo reported that the app saw a 216 percent growth in new Mandarin learners compared to the same time last year.

“Since TikTok might get banned, I joined the Chinese app Xiaohongshu instead. THEYRE SO FUNNY OVER THERE LMAO,” one user wrote. “Xiaohongshu’s for you page is infinitely cooler than any other app’s for you page,” another said.

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As users migrated to Xiaohongshu en masse, a wave of change hit the platform, as people on two sides of a decades-long geopolitical cold front began interacting for the first time. China, through the lens of America, is a world that has always been stuck in time, which has made the touchstones of its culture and humanity even more amorphous to many Americans. On the other side, women living in China say they are happy that they are being humanized as regular people rather than stereotypes on a global scale.

Kathy Lou, 46, was born and raised in China, and has been using Xiaohongshu for six years. She’s used the app historically to follow blogger recommendations for tourist destinations, lifestyle tips, and trending topics. The app was originally built as an alternative to Instagram, its earliest content focusing on lifestyle, beauty and fashion content. But now, her feeds are filled with Chinese people explaining their daily lives to Americans, and vice versa.

“I like what’s happening,” she says. “It helps Americans know more about ‘real China,’ like the price of groceries, price of public transportation, and robot delivery-ordered food at hotels and such. And at the same time, it helps Chinese people to know more about America — like the society, culture, and their real lives and viewpoints, as well.”

Jessica Lee, 23, posts vlog content to her 27,200 followers on Xiaohongshu. The Shanghai-based creator has been using the app for four years. “Before, being on Xiaohongshu, a lot of Americans seemed to think that China is behind in development and old, but it is highly-developed, high-tech and convenient in different ways,” she said. She feels as though the surprise is not necessarily equal; because she’s been watching American content for years, through the lens of mass media and TikTok, she hasn’t been as surprised by the content Americans are posting on Xiaohongshu now, as some of it she’s already seen on TikTok.

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Lou feels that both sides have been historically short-sighted with propaganda and stereotyping. And while she also isn’t totally surprised with the information that Americans are sharing, she is surprised that the TikTok ban inspired people to join Xiaohongshu at all. There hasn’t historically been much overlap between American and Chinese social platforms, owing to the longtime technological decoupling between the nations, and for both sides, this sort of interaction is new.

Some users were startled by the influx. Isa Feng, 35, says that at first, she thought the notes that American users were posting were posted by fake accounts. “I was shocked and thought it was a kind of scam,” she tells Rolling Stone. “When it began going viral, and I saw that an increasing number of American users were indeed flocking to Xiaohongshu as an alternative, I thought it was an interesting development.”

Of course, like other social media apps, Xiaohongshu has faced backlash over the years for promoting unrealistic beauty standards, called by some on the app “服美役,” or serving in the army of beauty, as well as fraudulent e-commerce content. But Feng said once she realized it was real, she enjoyed getting a glimpse into what American life is like. Her feed is largely American Samoyed puppies that she “can say hi to,” she says.

One of the topics of conversation that Feng was most interested in following was the discussion that Chinese and American users began having about the cost of living in both countries. The discourse mostly consisted of American surprise at the convenience of transportation, food delivery, and groceries in China. One conversation that Feng followed was the revelation of how expensive American health care is.

“Chinese people were shocked at how expensive it is to call an ambulance in the U.S. without medical coverage,” she said. “It’s breaking the information cocoon on social media.”

Medical coverage has been a specific point of disbelief to many Chinese users, who expressed surprise at photos of American medical bills that charged money for skin-to-skin contact after birth or the drastically higher costs of comparable cancer medications. Some Chinese commenters, in their astonishment, have also wondered if some of the issues that Americans have brought up — like the low paid time off, high cost of living, and struggle to make ends meet — are exaggerated or posted by bot accounts. Under a post shared by American user @Nerdcabinet that asked Chinese users to share what they were most surprised by after speaking with Americans. “I suspect that all the people on Xiaohongshu are fake Americans,” one commenter based in Guangdong wrote. “The information I have received since I was a child is that the United States has high welfare, high wages, freedom, and ease, one person works to support the whole family, and most of the holidays are spent traveling.”

“Now it is found that Americans can endure hardships even more than us,” another Zhejiang-based user responded.

There’s a general sense of Chinese national pride for a culture that has long been conceptualized as villainous as a result of government action. Feng says there’s even a saying being passed around among users right now: Koreans are experiencing China offline, Americans are experiencing China online, based on the recent news that Shanghai beat out Tokyo as a top winter travel destination for South Korean tourists.

Still, many have expressed some unhappiness with the sudden shift on their feeds. Lee feels as though the overall quality of the app has gone down. “The feed is a lot like TikTok now,” she says. Chinese users already have a domestic version of TikTok — Douyin — and Xiaohongshu was always posited as a more lifestyle-geared, Instagram-esque platform. There’s also been a strong culture of sisterhood on the app, as nearly 70 percent of users are women, with the majority being young women living in “first-tier” or “second-tier” cities. The default video greeting to audiences is even 姐妹, or “sisters,” which has become an inclusive phrase to mean everyone. But now, those demographics might be changing.

There have already been changes to adjust to the new audience. All the women who spoke with Rolling Stone mentioned a drastic shift towards English-language content on their feeds, as well as an increased amount of branded content as creators and brands alike attempt to capitalize on the glut of new users. “Seventy percent of my feed is in English now, and a lot of English comments are there,” Lee says. It’s an awkward contrast against some of the content — trends like 新中式妆容 (New Chinese style makeup) or the viral “city walk” fitness trend are often centered around Chinese culture and locations, specifically. Users like Feng alsouses Xiaohongshu for traditional Chinese cultural knowledge.

While the language might not be a problem for these women, who all are fluent in English, it’s not necessarily a widespread skill in the country. According to a 2012 national survey between the Ministry of Education and Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University, 67 percent of people in mainland China with junior secondary education qualifications or above had studied a foreign language, almost all of them having chosen English, but use for it was often low.

“It is interesting that despite not understanding Chinese at all, they would rather be on Xiaohongshu than Lemon8, Instagram Reels, or other American apps,” she says. “It’s pretty cool how people are communicating and learning different cultures.”

It’s still unclear what will happen with the future of TikTok, and with Xiaohongshu’s rising popularity, it’s possible that the app could also be banned in the US given the government’s concerns of foreign government data mining. In wake of TikTok’s reinstatement, some users shared joking goodbyes to the “TikTok refugees.” But regardless, Lou is happy to have experienced this cultural exchange on the app. “It’s fascinating that people from different cultures and backgrounds came together on one platform,” she said. “We were united together as more similar than different.”