DDuring a recent layover in Tokyo on my way from China to the United States, while planning which ramen place I was going to visit and which friends I wanted to meet up with, I was stopped by an elderly border agent AVERAGE. We are in Japan, you need a visa, he said sternly.
I knew I didn't need it according to official rules, but I didn't speak Japanese to chat with him. Turning around, thinking I had to live like Tom Hanks in The terminal before my next flight, I searched on Red Note. Thanks to several messages from people who had been in the exact same situation, I learned that I needed to go to a specific ticket booth around the corner and apply for a Shore Pass. I was able to enter Japan for 72 hours instead of sleeping on a bench at 30.
This is the kind of murky situation Red Note saved people from. Since last weekend, TikTok refugees, American social media users who flocked to Red Note ahead of Sunday's US ban, have been greeted with Chinese memes, photos of food, pets, street views and Taylor Swift lyrics. English tutorials help them navigate the Chinese app.
Although Red Note is now known as #1 free app in the United Statesit has been known since its inception in 2013 as a forum that caters to the niche interests and hobbies of middle-class Chinese users, a lifestyle guide to dining and travel, and a search engine for small and big questions.
Yet the ongoing digital migration, aided by the hashtag #TikTokrefugee which has garnered 872 million views and 16 million discussions so far, is likely to be a one-off, short-lived phase. And Beijing, Washington or Red Note itself must find a solution quickly.
Learn more: Will you still be able to use TikTok if it's banned?
From a business perspective, Red Note achieved something that TikTok owner ByteDance had dreamed of for years: gaining foreign users without much effort. In 2020, ByteDance launched a counterfeit version, Lemon8, and paying users to post on it. However, the application has struggled to retain users. It has recently benefited from TikTok's migration, now ranking at number 1.2 on the US App Store, but almost all the buzz revolves around Red Note.
Why aren't more users turning to Weibo, Bilibili, Kwai or even the real Chinese TikTok Douyin?
Red Note was initially prototyped in October 2013 by Stanford University graduates Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang as a shopping guide for female consumers. He has now become a lifestyle guru for around 300 million people.
The app is aimed at a highly educated audience, which includes a large diasporic population fluent in English. Due to their shared socioeconomic background, users of the platforms are eager to provide value and feedback to each other, like how I found help at the airport.
It is also the most apolitical social platform in China. On November 16, 2023, the day of Xi Jinping's first visit to the United States in years, I analysis trending lists on Chinese social networks. While listings on other apps were littered with items like China will be unified and must be unified (Weibo) and Biden shows 38-year-old photo to Xi Jinping (Douyin), Red Notes users were worried of the boundary between two married people. And white people's food.
It's not hard to imagine that even if American users tried other Chinese platforms, they might encounter more nationalism, hostility, or at best indifference.
For now, the articles I come across on Red Note are mostly about food, pets, and everyday people. But what happens if political activists decide to use the platform to amplify their voices? And more likely, what would happen if American users, accustomed to freedom of expression, wanted to verify the information they heard on China, on Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan or on labor rights?
The mix of Western and Chinese users within the Great Firewall created unprecedented regulatory problems that were never resolved by either China or the United States. Before Red Note became a thing for Americans, China could simply block an app running on its soil. But what about now?
On Wednesday, a trending article on Weibo could have stated the solution: Red Note is urgently recruiting English content moderators [Chinese].
Chinese censorship has intensified since Xi came to power in 2012, with stricter measures like enhanced online real name verification and the silencing of high-profile voices, including economists, law firmsand even stock market analysts.
Red Notes' relatively apolitical user base helped protect it. But in recent years, it has increasingly featured emotional stories about economic struggles, published content banned by state media and hosted articles critical of Chinese officials and the government. The recent influx of American users to Red Note could push Beijing to pay more attention to the app.
Indeed, Chinese censorship has regularly evolved over time. In the early 2000s, when I was in college, I sent five postcards to Ohio as part of a cultural exchange program. and only received one in return. Part of me always wondered if my government seized them. In 2008, I was excited to follow the American Idol contestants on Facebook. But that faded a year later when Beijing blocked the platform. And in 2021, I was almost sleepless when Clubhouse was live in mainland China, while many Chinese users freely discussed political issues. This freedom only lasted two weeks.
Even though the US ban on TikTok and censorship in China are inescapable facts, people still find a way to connect, whether on TikTok or Red Note, or elsewhere.
