Americans and Chinese share jokes on ‘alternative TikTok’ as US ban looms

The impending ban on TikTok has connected Chinese and American citizens more than ever, as they exchange jokes and memes in what one user called “old times”.

It’s all happening on a popular Chinese app called RedNote, or Xiaohongshu (literally translated as Little Red Book), which has no internet firewall separating China from the rest of the world.

It has been recording the self-titled US “TikTok refugees” looking for a new home online – even though their government wants TikTok banned for national security reasons.

Americans are now in direct contact with the 300 million Mandarin speakers in China and elsewhere – while in the real world, Beijing wants a Trump presidency that will strain its relationship with Washington.

At the heart of the US ban is the fear that China is using TikTok to spy on Americans.

The app has faced accusations that user data is ending up in the hands of the Chinese government – thanks to a Beijing law that requires local companies to “support, support and cooperate with the government’s intelligence service”. TikTok denies that this has ever happened, or that it could happen.

But that possibility doesn’t seem to worry some US users – 700,000 new users have signed up for RedNote in the past two days, making it the most downloaded free app in the US App store.

“The reason our government is telling us they’re banning TikTok is because they insist it’s you guys, the Chinese people, the government, whatever,” said new RedNote user Definitelynotchippy.

He goes on to explain why he’s on RedNote: “Many of us are smarter than that even though we decided to mess with our government and download a real Chinese app. Our government is learning about China and hanging out with you guys.”

TikTok, although owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is based in Singapore and claims to be independently run. Instead, the Chinese version of TikTok is another app called Douyin. RedNote, on the other hand, is a Chinese company based in Shanghai and among the top social media apps available in China and abroad.

So Washington’s fear of TikTok has also extended to RedNote.

This is why American users on RedNote call themselves “Chinese spies” – continuing the trend of TikTok where people have said goodbye to the “Chinese spy” who has allegedly been watching them for years.

RedNote is now full of notes that former TikTok users are looking for in places. One post reads: “I’m looking for my Chinese spy. I’m missing him. Please help me find him.”

And Chinese users responded: “I’m here!”

The honest, funny conversations on RedNote may not be what Chinese President Xi Jinping had in mind when he talked about “social and people-to-people cooperation” between China and the US.

But that’s what’s happening as happy Chinese users welcome Americans who are interested in the app.

“You don’t need to go to another country anymore, you can just talk to foreigners here,” said one Chinese RedNote user in a video that has received more than 6,000 likes.

“But it’s crazy, no one would have expected that we would meet like this one day, communicate so freely.”

Food, streaming shows and jobs have become popular topics: “Is life in America what it seems [the US TV show] My friends?”

Some Chinese users wanted a “tax” for using the platform – cat pictures.

“California cat tax,” said one post in response. “Here’s my contribution – the shorthair is a boy named Bob and the calico is a girl named Marley.”

Others are using the platform to ask Americans for help with their English homework.

One post reads: “Dear TikTok refugees, can you tell me the answer to question 53? Is the answer T (true) or F (false)?”

Help came quickly: about 500 people responded.

The flood of new American users seems to have taken a toll on RedNote – reports say the company is hiring English managers.

And others are trying to cash in on RedNote’s new found US stardom as well: the language learning app Duolingo presented a graph showing a 216% jump in the user base, compared to the time last year.

RedNote’s popularity was not guaranteed to last.

There’s no reason to think it won’t run into trouble for the same reasons as TikTok: concerns that it could be used by China to spy on Americans.

It’s unclear how long Beijing will stay on top of such exchanges — controlling the internet is vital to its repressive regime.

The irony of the situation was expressed by a Chinese user, who wrote: “Don’t we have a (firewall) wall?

In many cases, Chinese Internet users were unable to communicate directly with foreigners. Global platforms like Twitter and Instagram and search engines like Google are blocked in China, although people use VPNs to avoid this. Difficult topics – from history to criticism – or anything that appears to be critical of the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party are actively investigated.

It’s not clear how targeted RedNote is – it’s mainly used by young and middle-aged women in China, where they share photos and videos. It’s not like Weibo, another Chinese app, where discussion and airing of grievances is very common, resulting in many posts being downloaded.

But a few new users of RedNote say they have already received reports that their notes have violated the guidelines, including those who asked in a post if the program was “LGBT friendly”.

Another said he asked, “What? [sic] What do Chinese people think about homosexuals?

And Chinese users still remind Americans of the program “not to mention sensitive topics, such as politics, religion and medicine”.

One Chinese user also advised them to follow the “one China policy”, a diplomatic pillar of US-China relations – according to which the US ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​and has relations with China and not Taiwan, the self-governing island of Beijing says . his.

The US government has not commented on the RedNote so far, and neither has Beijing.

But the Chinese media seems to be enjoying it, the Global Times also interviewed a US user who said he would “like to chat with Chinese users”.

The future of American RedNote is anyone’s guess – but for now, at least online, the US-China rivalry is resting. Thanks for the cat pictures.