By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-16 13:01:52 | Updated at 2025-01-16 17:19:39
4 hours ago
The influx of American “TikTok refugees” onto the Chinese social media app RedNote may feed into some of Beijing’s main talking points, but could also pose a challenge for China’s censors.
As of Thursday afternoon, the topic “TikTok refugee” attracted more than 800 million views and 14.7 million discussions as new users, mostly with IP addresses in the United States, started posting on the app.
This week RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, or “little red book”, was the most downloaded free app in Apple’s US store in the wake of the latest push by the US authorities to ban TikTok.
The content – mostly lighthearted material such as cat videos, or people playing music or dancing – also included some users saying they wanted to “take down the American dictatorship” and to give their data to Chinese authorities – one of the main concerns expressed by US lawmakers.
The discussions, largely conducted in English, also offered the chance for Chinese users to correct misconceptions about the country – for example, the extent to which people eat cats and dogs – or offer passionate commentary on what they thought the Western media got wrong about China.
US and Chinese users also had the opportunity to discuss the relative problems with their health systems – with some of the latter taking comfort in the notoriously high charges many Americans face.
