A Chinese social media platform has grown so popular in the US that it’s this week’s most downloaded iPhone app — and it’s become the site of a sudden East-meets-West cultural exchange.
Rednote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, reached the most sensitive place in Apple app store this week as a divestment or Bane law threatened to close the United States to Tiktok.
The app, commonly known as the Chinese edition of Instagram, is flooded with posts from Chinese users greeting the entry of new American arrivals.
An article titled “American Please Please Ayhame” went viral on Monday and gained more than 10,000 comments after its poster, from Zhejiang, requested her homework in English.
Other popular articles also presented users, who indexed their location as the United States, providing the task of Chinese users.
“Ask me all the questions! I can with your task in English or answer questions about America (Texas). Thank you for welcoming Tiktok refugees,” an article said. Several commentators have downloaded photos of calculation sheets in English in response.
The number of US users in Chinese applications has led to the hashtag’s #tikTofugee in Xiaohongshu, with dozens of Chinese creators publishing guides on how to use the platform. The hashtag itself has been seen more than 64 million times, according to Business Insider’s knowledge.
“If you watch a video that is frankly great, just comment at 6 or 66 or 666,” said a user with a cowboy hat called Big Tooth Chinese Sedneck in a viral video, referring to a Chinese jargon term.
The sudden interest in Chinese social media platforms comes as Tiktok continues to challenge the divestment or bank law that the Senate followed in April. According to law, Tiktok will prevent operating in the United States on Sunday if its Chinese owner, Bytedance, does sell the application.
The law was passed amid broad security consideration that the Chinese government can access user knowledge if the byteyance continued to own the platform. Tiktok CEO Shou Zi Chew told the Wall Street Journal in 2023 that such considerations were unfounded because the corporate would paint with Oracle to buy User Insights in the United States.
On Friday, Tiktok argued its case in the Supreme Court, “it was going to be bleak” in January if the Court had not extended its divestment deadline. The court is expected to rule on the fate of the company this week.
There is a lot at play for Tiktok: he lost a challenge in December when he took the case to a panel of three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Circuit of the Columbia district.
This month, the president chose Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to suspend the law until after his inauguration. Trump is expected to take on Monday.
This is a reversal of Trump’s political stance at the company. Trump spurred on by the ban on Tiktok in 2020, when he is still president. But last month, the president-elect told reporters he had a “warm place” in his hub for Tiktok.
Still, the platform’s troubles have brought unexpected benefits to platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, which both surged to the top two spots on Apple’s App Store rankings. Lemon8 is also owned by ByteDance.
Meagan Loyst, the founder of the GEN Z VCS Investor Collective, told BI on Monday that they are going mass to those platforms to protest the planned prohibition of the Tiktok government.
“It’s just retaliation opposed to the government in the simplest way, but in a way that feels very much Gen Z,” Loyst said. The renderings for Tiktok and Xiaohongshu were not without delay responding to a request for comment.
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