TikTok Refugees and Citizen Diplomacy

Lost amid the noise around whether to ban the app is the story of what happened when hundreds of thousands of young Americans met their Chinese counterparts online.

I’m off today for the MLK Holiday and studiously avoiding the Ignoreguration. But I wanted to highlight a curious thing that happened when the TikTok shutdown was looming, and point you toward a great discussion about it.

Hordes of young displaced U.S. TikTok users, hoping to find a new home for their content and longing for their old feeds, created user accounts on a Chinese app called RedNote (小红书). Some estimate between 700,000 to 2,000,000 new users flocked to the app.

This caught everyone off guard, including the Chinese authorities. Why would U.S. users migrate over to a Chinese language app and even start learning Mandarin? What kind of eye-opening interactions would happen?

It turns out, there were plenty. Young Chinese users learned in real time about life for young adults in the U.S., and many were shocked to hear that some of the worst of it (school shooting drills, medical bankruptcy) weren’t just CCP propaganda.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of U.S. users learned that their peers in China were, well, a lot like them.

One of the biggest questions discussed on RedNote, and a keen moment for sisterhood, was whether men in the two respective countries cheat on their wives! Commiseration ensued.

Maybe the way back from the brink of open military confrontation with the Chinese are more cross-cultural exchanges like this. My brother Kaiser hosted a terrific discussion about the RedNote migration on his Sinica substack with some experts, and it makes for a fascinating listen, especially if you want some great content that isn’t about Day One of 2.0.

Listen to his podcast here.

Programming note: I’ll be breaking down the Day One actions of the TFG (that felon guy) over at The Big Picture substack tomorrow in lieu of my morning piece here. If you’d like to receive my summary in your email inbox but aren’t yet a subscriber to The Big Picture, it’s free of charge and you can sign up for it here. (Of course, we welcome all voluntary paid support for our efforts!)

See many of you tomorrow afternoon over at The Big Picture. And do give my brother’s podcast a listen. It provides us a bit of hope for peace and mutual respect and understanding between the two superpowers and is a decidedly bright spot in an otherwise dark time.

Jay