Chinese apps like Xiaohongshu (RedNote) have become more popular in the U.S. because TikTok users don’t want the government to ban the popular app because of national security worries.
Today, just days before the US ban on the popular app TikTok goes into effect, more American users have downloaded apps from China that are similar to TikTok. But it’s still not clear if any of these Mandarin apps will really take the place of TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US.
It was the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple Store this week, and it was the famous Chinese app Xiaohongshu, which most Americans call “RedNote.” Xiaohongshu was first released in 2013. Its layout is more like Pinterest or Instagram than TikTok, and it has a lot of shopping tools that became very popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sensor Tower, a market data company, says that between January 8 and January 14, 30 times more copies of Xiaohongsu were downloaded in the U.S. than at the same time last year. In January 2025, 22% of the RedNote app downloads came from people in the United States.
Americans who have joined the platform—which is all in Mandarin—have come together under the term #TikTokrefugee to criticise the U.S. government’s claims that Chinese ownership of TikTok is a threat to national security.
A 23-year-old TikTok user named Jaden told Yahoo News about her choice to download RedNote: “Honestly, I think a lot of people, including myself, are doing this out of spite and irony.” She also said that RedNote has not “fully replaced” TikTok for her.
Someone in their 30s who used Reddit but asked to remain anonymous told Yahoo News that they also got RedNote “in protest” against the law that would ban TikTok.
“I found RedNote, which was the first video-sharing app run in China that I could find,” they said. Then, after two months, everyone started doing the same thing to protest what Congress was doing.
Congress passed a law in April that President Biden signed. It says that ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has to sell the popular app to an American business or be banned from U.S. app stores. So far, ByteDance has not cut ties with TikTok. The company told the Supreme Court last week that the ban breaks its right to free speech under the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn the ban this week, it will happen on January 19.
One reason why Xiaohongsu might not fully replace TikTok in the U.S. is that they don’t speak the same language. Since the app doesn’t have translation tools, it’s not best for people in other countries.
The famous language-learning app Duolingo told Yahoo News that it had seen a 216% rise in new Mandarin Chinese learners in the U.S. since January 2024. There was also a rise in new users telling Duolingo that they chose to learn Mandarin because of TikTok.
Since the app is completely based in China, it already has censorship issues. This is different from TikTok, which is based in the U.S. but owned by a Chinese parent business.
According to Lily Li, a cybersecurity lawyer who started Metaverse Law, a law firm in California that focusses on AI and data security issues around the world, the company must follow China’s cybersecurity rules since it is based in China. Li said that because Xiaohongsu is based in China, it “will probably face some of the same concerns that TikTok has faced with respect to foreign ownership and control.”
Another app that has become more famous before the TikTok ban is Lemon8. It went from being the 82nd most-downloaded free app in the U.S. app store to being the second most-downloaded app, after Xiaohongsu, according to Sensor Tower.
But Lemon8 is also owned by ByteDance, and if it becomes as popular and important as TikTok in the U.S., it will have to deal with the same kinds of rules.
Additionally, Li said that the U.S. government is not trying to block all Chinese apps in the country. As an example, she said that Congress chose to focus on TikTok instead of other famous Chinese shopping apps like Shein or Temu because it has become the news source of choice for many Americans, especially young people.
“Think of it more like if it were a national radio station or newspaper—you would worry about foreign ownership and control of the sources, content, and information that a lot of people depend on, rather than goods and services in commerce,” Li said.
Li, whose parents are Chinese, finally said that the move of TikTok’s American supporters to Xiaohongsu was “a little ironic.”
Also Read: Rednote in China: What You Need to Know About the App a Lot of Tiktok Fans Are
She explained that the Chinese characters for Xiaohongsu don’t mean “Red Note,” but “Little Red Book.” This was the name of the little red book that every child in China during that time had to have because it basically contained Chairman Mao Zedong’s communist rules. “So I find it a little strange that there’s a First Amendment argument going on and people are rushing to get an app called the Little Red Book.”
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