There have been many reports over the past week about TikTok users in the United States ‘flocking’ to the Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu (小红书), or RedNote. It is said that at least 700,000 Americans have made this move.

I decided to download the RedNote app to see what all the fuss was about, as I was not previously aware of RedNote. I have visited China several times and can read Chinese. But while I have been on Wechat for a number of years, I have never experienced proper Chinese social media. I found it straightforward to download the app and set up an account in my Chinese name with minimal inputting of information. I set my main interests as ‘history’, ‘books’, ‘art’ and ‘food’ when prompted to do so. I did not set up the translation feature as I can read Chinese well enough to manage, but I understand from a friend that it is possible to do that.

I was initially surprised to find that posts on the RedNote site are not all videos as I discovered when I briefly downloaded the TikTok app last summer. A fair number of RedNote posts are indeed videos, but many are photos (often multiples photos) with explanatory text beneath, or purely text. I was also surprised to see many posts relating to Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, plus other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao and Zhou are turning up less often now that I have followed a number of accounts on the site and clicked on posts relating to non-political topics, but they both still crop up frequently. If anything there are more posts about Zhou Enlai than about Mao Zedong. My third surprise was that there is little advertising. It may be that this is a special dispensation given to new users of the site and that I will soon start to receive regular ads, but that has not happened after nearly a week.

My initial impressions of RedNote

Apart from the above, my major impressions of the site are as follows:

• There is a general air of seriousness and civility about RedNote. The written comments under the photo based posts and the subtitles/narration of the videos seek to inform rather than to persuade. There is none of the biliousness of ‘X’.
• There is a great emphasis on Chinese history, in particular the period since the fall of the Qing Empire in 1911. Hence the many posts about Mao and Zhou, plus various other CCP leaders and generals. I have also seen many posts relating to Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang (Soong Mei-ling), plus generals of the Nationalist Army under Chiang. There have also been posts about Wang Jingwei, who led the Chinese puppet government controlled by the Japanese during WWII.
• I have done a considerable amount of reading (in Chinese) about Chinese political and cultural figures who played important roles during the period from the 1920s to the 1970s, for example, Hu Feng (a writer), Yu Guangyuan (a CCP politician), Yang Xiaokai and Gu Zhun (both economists). I have searched under the names of these individuals and others with whose backgrounds I am familiar, and I have invariably found there are many posts about them on RedNote, often with detailed commentaries.
• I have followed a number of accounts of artists, including contemporary artists who discuss their work in video posts.
• I also receive a certain number of ‘lifestyle’ posts. Many relate to food in one form or another. One yesterday was a video about a gay couple living in a smart apartment in Shanghai who were filmed shopping for a new carpet.
• There have been many posts ‘welcoming’ new foreign users of RedNote – in English.
• I also saw a post about a famous Chinese pianist, Gu Shengying, who committed suicide in 1967 (aged just 30) following persecution during the Cultural Revolution. The person responsible for that RedNote account has done many posts over the years about other individuals who were victims of persecution.
• I have not seen any posts about Xi Jinping and I have certainly seen no comments that are critical of him. Nor have I seen any posts about politics in Xinjiang or the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. These are clearly issues it would not be sensible to raise on RedNote. In the same way that there are issues most of us would not seek to raise in posts on our own social media. I am sure that most readers of this post would have some idea what those might be. I realise that we can be viciously critical of Keir Starmer and Donald Trump, but there are definitely no-go areas for us as well.

What does the future hold?

I certainly plan to continue using RedNote. I find there is much interesting content and some of it will be useful in my biographical studies. As for the so called ‘TikTok refugees’, I suspect that many of them must be disappointed by the greater emphasis on text and the general air of seriousness about RedNote, as compared with TikTok. Others, however, are likely to enjoy the chance to learn more about China’s current way of life and communicate directly with people living there.

One thing I have no doubt about, is that a person living in the United States, Canada or western Europe whose knowledge of China is mainly based on western press reports and politicians’ statements about the country, will be quite surprised by some of the things they see on RedNote. They will see many Chinese young people who appear to be living happy and busy lives; they will see a society which has a keen interest in its history and culture; they will see much discussion of food, art and books. We are all aware that individuals who put posts on social media tend to exaggerate the positives and often paint an unrealistic picture of their lives, but it is possible to obtain at least some impression of what a country and its people are really like from such posts.

It seems likely that a deal will be reached after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the US President tomorrow, to enable TikTok to continue to operate in the US. Most of the TikTok ‘refugees’ will then happily return to TikTok and resume producing their videos. But it does appear the Chinese have decided to take the risk of allowing non-Chinese residents onto Chinese social media sites. They may of course change their mind after a short experiment. But if they do not, ever greater numbers of people in the US and Europe will start to follow the Chinese sites and will gradually become more familiar with day to day life – and people – in China. They are then likely to be much more sceptical about the rather shallow and one-sided reporting we now receive on China. In the longer term, this could be a great ‘soft power’ coup for China.

Michael Ingle – michaelingle01@gmail.com

Categories: Uncategorized