Lol so I’ve been using xiaohongshu for a little while. My boyfriend (who is from China) and I use it for travel suggestions, cooking recipes, and occasionally entertainment content. Now, with TikTok being banned (as of the 19th?), America is flocking over to xiaohongshu (which literally doesn’t even have an English name in the app store!) to the point that it is now THE #1 app in the app store overall.
Do you guys have xiaohongshu? Do you ever use it? Do you think it’ll turn into TikTok 2.0? How confident are we in the fact that Americans will be more interested in learning (and actual learn) Mandarin?
The stuff I’ve been seeing on xhs for the last couple days has been hilarious. Overall, the integration is going as expected. Mostly good stuff, mostly people saying they wanna learn Chinese now, a handful of a**holes just being rude, and a very welcoming Chinese community.
Note #2 is just the irony of banning a “Chinese” (not Chinese) app (TikTok) being of data concerns (supposedly), but everyone going STRAIGHT to an ACTUALLY Chinese app to reunite with their “spies”
So, with TikTok, 90% of the focus is basically doomscrolling right? Xhs, the main focus is more or less like an explore page. The algorithm builds up pretty quickly and accurately based on what you watch and what you’ve liked/saved (compared to TikTok).
With xhs, there are actually more photo-based posts as opposed to videos/reels. It’s really great for finding anything and everything like recipes, instructions, suggestions, learning content. Kind of like Instagram. There is a doomscrolling feature more like Instagram where, if you open a video, you can continue scrolling from there.
Plus, when it comes to humor content, you get the Chinese flavor of internet humor which is fascinating if you were mostly on western social media.
I’ve been using 小红书 for a few months. It’s quite good for interacting with Chinese people and doing some language exchange.
It is not a replacement for TikTok. It is an app made by Chinese for Chinese. Almost all of the content is in Chinese. Even the UI isn’t fully translated into English. The “great TikTok migration” is surely a fad, and is probably overstated to begin with.
A few cynical opinions I’d layer on top:
Most people do not have the patience nor the aptitude to learn Mandarin at all, let alone to the level required to genuinely navigate 小红书
The Chinese nationals are welcoming of the foreign influx because it’s novel, but surely, it will soon turn to exasperation and xenophobia
In the event that I am wrong about everything above, the CAC will levy restrictions to prevent Chinese nationals from interacting with foreigners. This would most likely take the form of an application split like TikTok/Douyin
In a nutshell, 小红书 is fantastic if you are learning Mandarin and have an active interest in China. Otherwise, it is fairly useless.
I have it but I seldom use it. I will definitely try to get more familiarized with it since I do believe that it might be able to end up crossing over to western audiences in one form or another and this might be relevant to my career.
All hype bubbles, would expect this to fade into history just like all the hype bubbles before, especially once ppl realize learning chineese is impossible for the 5-sec attention span.
Why wouldn’t they take the tremendous soft power W? Undoing billions of dollars in yellow scare propaganda abroad while confirming to the domestic population everything they’ve heard about the US is true, if not a massive understatement
I think they will while it suits them. Right now it’s all “Westerners learn Mandarin” which is as you say a big win for them. How the western audience behaves will drive what happens next though I think. If it stays somewhat small and doesn’t rock the boat in any meaningful way it’ll be left alone.
But the moment the tide of ideas turn and there are headlines like “RedNote flush with anti-Xi Jinping memes from the US” or “US teens promoting democracy movement on Rednote gain steam” I’d put money on the door quietly closing. All the Chinese users will slowly notice that no international accounts are showing up in their feeds any-more etc.
Have you actually been on the app recently? The only democracy getting promoted is chinese consultative democracy as westerners realize how profoundly undemocratic their society really is, and the chinese realize the conditions imposed upon US citizens is far worse than they understood
I think you’re agreeing with me lol. Right now it’s doing exactly that - promoting China, hence it’s allowed. So yes, I agree there is none of what I mentioned in the “if the tide turns” theory is happening at the moment. My point was that in 2, 5 or 10 years if things change and people start pushing western ideas THEN it’ll be locked down, not that it’s at any risk right now or next few months. And possibly never if the wester audience doesn’t grown enough or make enough of a fuss.
As someone living in a country that has had its elected goverments overthrown by CIA plots a dozen of times during its history it seems like a pretty reasonable attitude to me.
You can invite someone into your house for tea and have a perfectly good long lasting friendship, as long as your guest doesn’t try to kick you out of your home and burn the whole thing to the ground.
Okay yeah I suppose we are agreeing lol. I think its more likely that the US government bans it than use it in a vain attempt to propagandize the chinese. (I suspect they know that this play only works in countries impoverished by imperialism and that, considering China’s level of development, continued cross pollination can really only do more harm than good.)
I suppose we’ll have to see how it pans out in the long term. I’m a big fan of China and often over-praise it, but even I realize that calling Xiaohongshu a clinched “soft power W” is a bit hasty. China has a lot more to lose from its citizens understanding the lifestyle of the West than the other way around.
One thing that’s particularly good for Chinese soft power is the userbase of Xiaohongshu. It’s primarily upper-class, urban, cosmopolitan, 20-30 year old, and female. Foreigners looking in are seeing a rather refined, cushioned image of China.
“China has a lot more to lose from its citizens understanding the lifestyle of the West than the other way around”
Hard disagree there. And I think the countless interactions in which chinese netizens are disgusted by the crime, debt, healthcare, labor practices, and infrastructure in the US proves it.
Im reminded of Michael Parenti writing of his visit to the USSR in Blackshirts and Reds. He was talking to a Soviet academic in his comfortable, modest state provided apartment and the academic said “the poorest American lives much better than any of us." These interactions are destroying any possibility for that sort of misunderstanding.
I think there is a sampling bias on both sides. On the Chinese side, again, 小红书 users are upper-class and cosmopolitan. They stereotypically live in Shanghai high-rises. They want for little and peering into their lives paints a utopian image of China.
Conversely, “TikTok refugees” are of the opposite breed. The type of person who would abandon TikTok in favor of a foreign application like XHS is far more likely to be dissatisfied with their lot in life. They tend to be more critical of their country (which isn’t bad) and in a worse situation in terms of luxury. They are very quick to showcase both their dissatisfaction and their lower quality of life.TikTok refugees are the type who got screwed over by the American system and never got close to anything resembling “The American Dream”. This is the side of America that Chinese 小红书 users are seeing.
In a nutshell, 小红书 creates an environment where Chinese society looks better than it is, and American society looks worse than it is. On one hand, this is perhaps a good thing because many Americans think of China as a destitute dystopia which is far from true. On the other hand, it’s important to see the distorted lens we’re looking through at all times. I believe that China has the potential to become a more prosperous society than the U.S. at some point in the future, but it’s simply not there yet.
So all this to say that you are correct! I was wrong about the soft power effect. It really is making China look good. But I don’t think it will work out in the long term as the cracks begin to show.