The Lure of Chinese App Red Note

During a recent layover in Tokyo from China to the U.S., as I was planning the ramen spot I was going to hit and friends I wanted to catch up with, I was stopped by a middle-aged border agent. “This is Japan, you need a visa,” he said sternly. 

I knew I didn’t need one according to official rules, but I didn’t speak Japanese to argue with him. As I turned back, thinking that I had to live like Tom Hanks in The Terminal before my next flight, I searched on Red Note. Thanks to multiple posts by people who had been in the exact same situation, I learned that I had to go to a specific counter by the corner and ask for a “shore pass.” I was able to enter Japan for 72 hours instead of sleeping on a bench in my 30s. 

That’s the kind of obscure situation Red Note has saved people out of. Since last weekend, the “TikTok refugees”—the American social media users who are flocking to Red Note ahead of the U.S. ban on Sunday—are being welcomed with Chinese memes, photos of food, pets, street views, and Taylor Swift lyrics. English-language tutorials are helping them navigate the Chinese app.

Although Red Note may now be known as the no.1 free app in the U.S., it has since its inception in 2013 been known as a forum that caters to middle-class Chinese users’ niche interests and hobbies—a lifestyle guide on dining and travel, and a search engine for questions big and small.

Yet the ongoing digital migration—helped by the #TikTokrefugee hashtag that has amassed 872 million views and 16 million discussions so far—will likely be a unique and short-lived phase. And either Beijing, Washington, or Red Note itself needs to find a solution fast.

Read More: Will You Still Be Able to Use TikTok If It’s Banned?

From a business perspective, Red Note has achieved something TikTok owner ByteDance has been dreaming of for years—winning overseas users without trying too hard. In 2020, ByteDance launched a knockoff version, Lemon8, and has paid users to post on it. Yet the app has struggled to retain users. It has recently benefited from the TikTok migration, now ranking at no. 2 on the U.S. app store, but almost all the buzz surrounds Red Note.

Why aren’t more users turning instead to Weibo, Bilibili, Kwai, or indeed, the real Chinese TikTok Douyin?

Red Note was initially prototyped in October 2013 by Stanford University graduate Mao Wenchao and Qu Fang as a shopping guide for female consumers. It has now evolved into a lifestyle guru for around 300 million people.

The app has a highly educated audience, which includes a large diasporic population who speak fluent English. Because of their shared socio-economic background, the platform’s users are keen 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 Nov. 16, 2023, the day of Xi Jinping’s first visit to the U.S. in years, I analyzed the trending lists on Chinese social media. While lists on other apps were peppered with items like “China will be unified and must be unified” (Weibo) and “Biden shows a 38-year-old photo to Xi Jinping” (Douyin), Red Note’s users were concerned about “the boundary of two married people” and “white people food.”

It’s not difficult to imagine that even if U.S. users tried other Chinese platforms, they may encounter more nationalism, hostility, or, at best, indifference. 

For now, the posts I come across on Red Note are mostly about food, pets, and ordinary people. But what happens if political activists decide to use the platform to amplify their voices? And more likely, what happens if American users, who are used to free speech, want to verify the news they’ve been hearing about China, on Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, or labor rights?

The hodgepodge of Western and Chinese users within the “Great Firewall” has created unprecedented regulatory problems that have never been dealt with by either China or the U.S. Before Red Note became a thing for Americans, China could simply block an app that’s operating on its soil. But what about now?

As of Wednesday, a Weibo trending item may have spelled out the solution: “Red Note is urgently recruiting English content moderators [Chinese].”

China’s censorship has intensified since Xi took office in 2012, with stricter measures like enhanced online real-name verification and the silencing of high-profile voices including economists, law firms, and even stock analysts.

Red Note’s relatively non-political user base has helped protect it. But in recent years it has increasingly featured emotional stories about economic struggles, published content banned by state media, and played host to posts that criticized Chinese officials and the government. The recent flood of American users to Red Note may push Beijing to pay more attention to the app.

Indeed, China’s censorship has routinely evolved with the times. While in middle school in the early 2000s, I sent out five postcards to Ohio as part of a cultural exchange program and only received one back. Part of me always wondered if my government seized them. In 2008, I was excited to follow 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, when many Chinese users were discussing political issues freely. That freedom lasted a mere two weeks.

While the U.S. TikTok ban and censorship in China are inescapable facts, people always find a way to connect—if not for on TikTok or Red Note, then somewhere else.