The following article by Joe Scholten takes a look at the Chinese social media app RedNote (小红书/xiaohongshu – the direct translation of which is Little Red Book), to which millions of “TikTok refugees” migrated after the Biden regime banned TikTok.
Joe notes that the sudden appearance of millions of US users on RedNote has led to an unprecedented (and unpredicted) cultural exchange between particularly young people in China and the US – in spite of the best efforts of the US government to prevent such exchanges. “What stunned me most was that for the first time in a very long time I had seen Americans critically engaging with a fundamental truth regarding China that I thought would take Americans decades to understand: that at the end of the day we have collectively been lied to about China.”
The article describes how people in the US were able to see for the first time how people in China really live, and how many were shocked that ordinary Chinese people find it far easier to afford dignified housing, good quality healthcare and nutritious food than their US counterparts. What’s more, the “TikTok refugees” were surprised to find that the Chinese people they encountered online were able to express themselves freely on a wide range of topics. “For example, they seemed surprised that there was a plethora of LGBTQ content, or the account of a Uighur medical student talking about how much she liked the nightlife in her college city, or just how unifying cat taxes and tongue-in-cheek memes about China stealing data were.”
Joe concludes:
This moment with RedNote is a historic one. I sincerely hope that Americans will go to Little Red Book and see how their own lives could be better. I want Americans to see how we can build a better world, a socialist world, and how we can learn from the things China does well and apply those lessons to the betterment of the world.
The incoming Trump administration has given TikTok a 75-day reprieve, so it remains to be seen whether US users will be able to continue on the app going forward. Regardless, the cultural exchange that has opened up via RedNote is a positive example of grassroots people-to-people relations that can help to counter the New Cold War propaganda and build towards a future of peace and cooperation between the US and China.
Joe Scholten is a writer and activist from St Louis, Missouri.
As news has come forth that the United States Supreme Court has upheld a proposed TikTok ban following months of lawsuits against the ban, a somewhat strange phenomenon has emerged, with millions of American users fleeing to a Chinese Social Media app 小红书 (literally “Little Red Book”, but usually known in English as RedNote). As of the penning of this article roughly 3.4 million American users have downloaded the app as per Reuters; I suspect however that number is an underestimate given my own experiences on the app.
The app’s user base is largely made up of women, with about 300 million users. By US standards this is a large user base, but WeChat has roughly 1 billion more active users. Despite such a large user base Americans, and anglophone internet users in general, are likely unfamiliar with the Chinese internet. Sites like BIlibili, Youku, Weibo, etc aren’t household names in most anglophone countries outside of largely immigrant and ethnically Chinese communities within said countries. The large influx of users to RedNote has been one of the more unexpected events of the last few years, though I suppose this may be a week when decades happen.
Before penning an analysis of this application, I wanted to understand it by engaging with it, and although I have had plenty of thoroughly eye opening experiences, I will discuss these later. I would like to first begin this section by detailing how American audiences have reacted to these events. Millions of views have been garnered on platforms like TikTok describing how Americans have been lied to about China. Upon seeing how people in China can afford groceries, how housing is affordable, how the government prevents homelessness, and how the social credit system doesn’t exist, many Americans express the sentiment that they have been lied to by their government. By all accounts they have been lied to, seeing posts from Chinese audiences confused by the concept of “social credit” has exposed millions of Americans to a fundamental truth: much of the information they have received about China has been false. From a historical standpoint this has been an enormous paradigm shift.
During the Cold War, a strength of the American system was how ubiquitous and global US products were – things like Coca Cola, Hollywood, popular music and so on were globally recognizable brands. Even in the USSR you could find teenagers who wanted to emulate US culture (stilyagi). Arguably to this day the same can be said in relation to these brands. Tools like social media are often headquartered in the US and have ties to US intelligence agencies. Yet for presumably the first time in history, US users are flocking in the millions to an app headquartered in a socialist country. What’s more, Americans are beginning to understand that they themselves have been consuming US capitalist propaganda from the apps they consume. The hegemony of US social media is being broken.
When I logged onto the app I found myself thinking deeply about it from a structural standpoint, as I had found it to be thoroughly enjoyable. The people were incredibly welcoming, albeit at first somewhat confused why the algorithm had begun recommending millions of foreign users one morning. But it went beyond merely being friendly; people genuinely wanted to understand and engage with foreign users. The content was generally positive, and it seemed to be encouraged to be kind. Reading through the rules, it seemed like it was genuinely designed to promote good socialist values. Users of the app are discouraged from flaunting wealth, from engaging in crass consumerism, from engaging in dangerous medical practices, from bullying, from engaging in bad faith, and so on, while being encouraged to be kind and provide insightful commentary. Additionally there were very few advertisements on the app, and posts seemed to genuinely have people engaging in rational discussion to reach consensus. I don’t think that one need explain this consensus building behavior by making orientalist assumptions; it would appear that moderation and content policy and promotion of socialist values make online spaces much more pleasant for users.
This isn’t to say that every comment was necessarily kind. For example, one user asked somewhat coyly if Americans knew how to use hair products upon seeing my somewhat unkempt appearance in a video I posted. I laughed, because admittedly the user was correct, but if the worst interaction I had on an app on my first day was a mildly funny remark about my hair, then I am doing far better than I am on Twitter, where I routinely see racist posts inciting ethnic hatred towards various groups, and this behavior is subject to little to no moderation.
I was able to ask users questions about their lives and their politics in my DMs. I received thoughtful answers detailing mostly positive features of the society the users lived in. Some lamented existing income inequality in China, and how some bourgeois values had begun to emerge as a result of market reforms. Others praised programs around poverty alleviation and eliminating homelessness. I saw some people discuss the legitimate problems that existed with social programs and the ways that the government and people experimented to try to rectify the issues they faced, including ways to ensure equality between urban and rural communities. I witnessed a microcosm of a society capable of self criticism, innovation, and profoundly deep thought about truly important things.
I asked people for pictures of their day to day lives and to show ways that their futures had improved. A young man showed me a village commune that the government had helped the people to build. Thirty years ago, in the 1990s, this village was small, with no building larger than two stories. Now a building project exists there, with community-owned stores, and no rent. This is one such picture of a project that was given to me by a netizen. Not every community is like this, but the fact that such communities can exist is genuinely beautiful.
In my spare time I sometimes explore abandoned buildings – my hometown unfortunately has many of them. A woman who grew up in Chongqing showed me pictures of an abandoned factory that once stood in part of the city. The government turned it into a beautiful train stop along their city’s public rail line. She’s a graphic designer, and seemed to be longing to do what the architects of the transit line had done, describing her desire to be a “People’s Designer” and use her talents to help the community.
She showed me how the people identified a problem, with an abandoned factory going to waste. They coordinated an analysis of the needs of the community, the need for public transportation, and used the resources at hand to make a beautiful train station and rest zone, helping to revitalize the area. Seeing the fruits of socialist planning in creating beautiful public spaces where old men play cards together while waiting for a train arising from a place that had seen better days made me feel genuinely hopeful. She was very engaging and helpful. In return, I sent her pictures of my adventures at an abandoned cement factory in my hometown.
Thinking of my hometown reminded me of a feeling that I had while using Little Red Book. Many netizens expressed curiosity as to why so many Americans felt shocked by their interactions on the app, and why so many were being forthright with their trauma. I had to explain to a young man with an English name, Raymond (given to him by his teacher of course), that in my hometown I knew people who went to a school where there was a mass shooting, and that I knew people who had died from gun violence, overdoses, alcoholism or homelessness. I showed him photographs of friends of mine who had children that had been murdered, and how in the US these outcomes are depressingly common. I showed him some data on how hard it is for young people to afford housing, and how much more expensive it was to buy groceries in the US, or that people went into debt and became homeless because of medical bills. I hated the thought that, by being honest about circumstances in St. Louis, I could have traumatized a young man – though judging from his subsequent questions today about guitars and Lego Bandai sets and his amusement at seeing the Mall of America’s Giant Lego Statue he seems to be doing well.
The interactions had Chinese users stunned as well. I had some Chinese netizens surprised that I can speak Chinese, or that I had seen movies like the Battle at Lake Changjin. I saw American users stunned at how content they never thought they’d see was prevalent on the app. For example, they seemed surprised that there was a plethora of LGBTQ content, or the account of a Uighur medical student talking about how much she liked the nightlife in her college city, or just how unifying cat taxes and tongue-in-cheek memes about China stealing data were. I saw Chinese users stunned at how Americans had to pay for medical care and how in the US working two jobs just to get by was shockingly common. I traded stories with Chinese users about snacks, lamenting that a small bar of relatively cheap chocolate from Aldi’s was 20 yuan (roughly the cost of a plate of dumplings and a jianbing with enough for a youtiao if my math serves me correctly according to the comments of a video I had made).
What stunned me most was that for the first time in a very long time I had seen Americans critically engaging with a fundamental truth regarding China that I thought would take Americans decades to understand: that at the end of the day we have collectively been lied to about China. Returning to TikTok after having used Little Red Book I saw a man in his late 40s saying that he felt humbled seeing people in China able to afford groceries and having nice parks. I saw a woman describing how she realized that for the first time she didn’t feel free, that she had the freedom to have opinions but no freedom to make real choices. I saw a woman describing with sadness how she worked hard her whole life, going to school and studying hard, only to realize that things didn’t need to be so hard, and that people in China could live better, more fulfilling lives. I saw a man describing how the US government didn’t want people to see content from China because of how it exposed the hollowness of the American dream. I saw people lamenting that healthcare, food, housing, etc doesn’t need to be so unattainable for so many people, yet it is.
This moment with RedNote is a historic one. I sincerely hope that Americans will go to Little Red Book and see how their own lives could be better. I want Americans to see how we can build a better world, a socialist world, and how we can learn from the things China does well and apply those lessons to the betterment of the world.
