Employees stand on the balcony of the Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) also known as RedNote company headquarters building in Shanghai, China, on January 14, 2025. Photo by Alex Plavevski/EPA-EFE
Jan. 19 (UPI) — The Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also referred to as RedNote in English, has sprung to supremacy as the top free app on iPhone as the ban on TikTok took effect Sunday, drawing the ire of U.S. lawmakers and the glee of the Chinese Communist Party.
The app made headlines last week as users of TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, jumped ship with their followers ahead of the looming ban. American lawmakers passed a bill last year, signed into law by President Joe Biden, that would ban the app if it could not find a U.S. buyer by the time the deadline expired.
Before its ban, TikTok had some 170 million users in the United States. As TikTok users fled the platform, Xiaohongshu gained nearly 3 million U.S. users in a single day, according to analytics firm Similarweb.
Now, Apple’s App Store has filled with glowing reviews for the app, which has a remarkable 4.9-star rating compared to 4.7 stars for Meta’s Instagram and 4.5 stars for Meta’s Facebook.
“The sudden popularity of this app (RedNote) in the U.S. has sparked an unexpected cultural exchange between Chinese and American users,” one user wrote in their review, as another called it a “glimpse of the real world.”
“It’s a great experience to interact with people of other cultures when you are like me, a middle-class American who lives paycheck to paycheck and could never afford to actually travel to another country,” that reviewer wrote. “I followed many to RedNote after the TikTok ban appeared eminent and I feel right at home there.”
The app is also currently the top free social app on the Google Play store with a 4.7-star rating and reviews that call it an “extremely healthy environment for a social platform.” On Google, users noted that the interface is “relatively easy” even if you don’t speak Mandarin.
“While I agree with the sentiment of rebelling by opting for a non-American platform, I am concerned that this action may also result in its own ban,” Perry Picasshoe, a 24-year-old artist from California who had 169,000 followers on TikTok told Artnet News ahead of the ban. “I worry the future may resemble a game of Whack-A-Mole.”
The fact that TikTok refugees are flooding Xiaohongshu is not lost on lawmakers in the United States and China, with some American leaders promising to ban Xiaohongshu as Chinese state media published articles welcoming Americans to the app.
China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party, exclaimed in an op-ed that the ban of TikTok took Americans “closer to China.”
“This phenomenon not only reflects users’ desire for freedom of speech but also demonstrates a non-cooperative attitude toward the U.S. government,” Bonnie Williamson wrote for China Daily. “The more the U.S. government bans Chinese platforms, the more users want to use them.”
Cybersecurity experts are noting that the TikTok migration to Xiaohongshu might actually pose a greater national security risk than TikTok, which itself is banned in China, because it was never meant to be an app used by Americans and so all of its servers are located in China.
Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Michigan, who serves as the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, told Business Insider last week that Trump would have the authority under the law that banned TikTok to also enforce a ban on Xiaohongshu.
“Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book was instrumental in China’s communist cultural revolution,” Moolenaar said as part of a statement. “Today, a Chinese app of the same name wants to be the next TikTok — complete with Chinese control.”
Returning President Donald Trump said Sunday that TikTok users “deserve to see” his “exciting inauguration” as he promised an extension that would keep the app from staying dark.
