Commentary: Chinese app Xiaohongshu seeing influx of new US users

They flock to platform amid looming TikTok ban, leading to more US-China interactions

- Yew Lun Tian

Ever since China blocked Google, Facebook and other Western social media from 2009, Chinese netizens have had little chance of interacting with Americans on the same social media platform.

But now, an influx of American users, who call themselves "TikTok refugees," has surfaced on popular Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.

With the clock ticking down to TikTok's likely closure in the US within days, some of its American users have migrated to the Chinese Instagram-like social media app, whose name means "little red book."

In an ironic turn of events, the attempt by the US government to shield Americans from Chinese influence is having the opposite effect – it is driving Chinese and American social media users closer.

"Hi everyone, I'm a TikTok refugee. I literally just got this app an hour ago; so far everyone has been so nice," said a brown-haired American teenager with the moniker "fern" in a video posted on Jan 13. She added Chinese captions to her video to reach out to the new online community.

Had fern stayed on TikTok, she would not have much chance to cross digital paths with Chinese social media users, who are segregated in the China version of TikTok called Douyin.

On grounds of national security and data privacy concerns, a US federal law requires ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, to take the popular short-video app off the shelves of US Apple and Google app stores from Jan 19, unless it sells the app to a non-Chinese company. ByteDance has said it will not do so.