The astonishing migration of “American refugees from TikTok” to a Chinese application they knew nothing about

A user of the Xiaohongshu application, in Beijing, January 15, 2025. ADEK BERRY / AFP As the ban on TikTok in the United States approaches, its American users are migrating by the hundreds of thousands to a Chinese application, which they had probably never heard of a few days before. Xiaohongshu means “little red book” in Chinese. The name is not a reference to the collection of quotes from Mao Zedong, but to a diary. It is sometimes translated into English by RedNote. Read also | Article reserved for our TikTok subscribers about to be banned in the United States. His last hope: Donald Trump Read later Users – mostly women – share videos and photos of their vacations, their makeup, their clothing choices, their pets or restaurants. The lifestyle application is only intended for a Chinese audience, and only exists in Chinese. However, since Monday January 13, it has been the most downloaded on iPhone in the United States, ahead of another previously little-known Chinese social network, Lemon8, developed by the parent company of Tiktok. The administration of United States President Joe Biden considers that the TikTok application, the international version of a Chinese social network, by collecting data from its 170 million American users, constitutes a threat to national security. A law passed in April 2024 gives its owner, the Bytedance group, until this Sunday to sell it. Otherwise it will no longer be downloadable in the United States and risks becoming obsolete. You have 77.4% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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