With just a few days left before a looming ban on TikTok, users are flocking to another China-based short-form-video platform: Xiaohongshu.
Lawmakers who voted to ban TikTok now say that app is also in their crosshairs.
“It’s just another way to skirt the idea that they want to influence our children in negative ways,” Rep. Rich McCormick told NOTUS. “We will legislate against them. I mean, we have to. We have to protect our youth. We have to protect the future of this country.”
Rep. Beth Van Duyne said if other apps presented a way to get around the TikTok ban, “then obviously we’re going to have to look at creating more legislation to close that loophole.”
Xiaohongshu, which translates to “Little Red Book” and is better known as “Red Book” or “RedNote” in the U.S., has rocketed to No. 1 in the Apple and Android app stores.
The app is owned by the Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology, and it actually instructs users to “promote patriotism, collectivism and socialism,” while reportedly censoring criticism of Chinese leaders.
In the app’s community standards, Xiaohongshu advises users to “practice the core values of socialism” and “spread the correct view of history, nation, country and culture.”
(“I guess I’d get kicked off that one pretty quick,” Rep. Mike Collins told NOTUS.)
In the app’s laws and regulations Xiaohongshu says it will “adopt the strictest management measures” to enforce its policies, which include a ban on “undermining national unity,” “spreading rumors,” sharing insults, “insulting the image of heroes” or “abusing the image” of state and party leaders.
“Very concerning,” Rep. Tim Burchett said of the regulations. “I think we let the fox in the hen house, and we got to call it out.”
Xiaohongshu, or any other app suspected of providing data to the Chinese government, could fall under the standard of the same legislation that’s forcing the sale of TikTok due to national security concerns. But in the short-term, as the potential TikTok ban nears and users look for alternatives, Xiaohongshu appears to be a work-around.
“The issue with TikTok is obviously the influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party and how they not only use the data of Americans, but manipulate — with algorithms and other means — the information flow on the app,” Rep. Mike Lawler told NOTUS.
“The target wasn’t TikTok the app; the target obviously is the control of the application and the data and how that is being utilized by the Chinese Communist Party,” Lawler added. “That concern applies across the board. If there are other applications where that is a problem, or potentially a problem, obviously that’s something that should be looked at.”
Rep. Mark Alford told NOTUS that the U.S. “could be at war with China in two years,” and as such, it was essential to take on social media platforms with “communist ownership or influence.”
“No one wants to face that reality of what our intelligence agencies are telling us, what our military is telling us is a very real and clear threat,” Alford said. “And it’s time we’d better wake up and stop indulging in whatever pleasure TikTok may be and look for the better good of our country.”
Still, some lawmakers see difficulty in clamping down on China’s digital influence in the U.S.
“This is gonna be a really hard fit, trying to squeeze the balloon and have it not go somewhere else,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa told NOTUS. “I don’t know what the answer is.”
“We get rid of this one, then it’s like Whac-A-Mole,” Sen. Rick Scott said. “Seems like we’re gonna have to do something else.”
And as Burchett said, the U.S. often allows Chinese companies to operate here while China stops U.S. companies from operating there.
“There ought to be some repercussions for that, but Washington is gutless and they’re in bed with the Chinese,” Burchett said. “They’ll talk a good game but they won’t do a whole lot to stop them.”
He added that the Chinese were “so much more advanced than a group of 60-plus-year-old congressmen.”
TikTok has said it will cease operations in the U.S. on Sunday if the Supreme Court doesn’t strike down, or otherwise extend, the divestment deadline imposed by Congress.
Rep. Nancy Mace was one of the 65 House members to vote against the TikTok ban, arguing at the time that Congress would be better off fixing underlying data security issues rather than targeting specific apps or countries.
“I was like, ‘This is kind of fucked up,’ so fix the underlying problem with cyber and data and apply it to everybody,” Mace said. “The government should not be in the business of banning apps from the app store.”
“We made the problem worse,” she said.
In four days, more than 700,000 new users have joined Xiaohongshu, Reuters reported, increasing U.S.-based weekly downloads by 200%. The topic “TikTok refugee” gained millions of interactions on the platform, with many Americans renouncing what they saw as censorship from the U.S. government.
Still, lawmakers are just playing catch up.
“I just heard of RedNote about 30 minutes ago,” Rep. Dan Newhouse, part of the Select Committee on the CCP, told NOTUS on Wednesday night.
“I guess it’s not unsurprising that there would be another option for people, if they can’t go to TikTok to go to something else, right?” he said. “It provides an opportunity for the CCP to further influence Americans.”
Rep. Nick LaLota noted that he has three young daughters at home. “I asked them what their friends are hearing or saying,” he said. “They haven’t heard much just yet, so we’re going to continue to monitor it.”
Internal documents obtained by the China Digital Times, a news service run out of California, show the extent to which Xiaohongshu works quickly to tamp down or entirely ban discussion of hundreds of banned topics — including criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, disease outbreaks in livestock and hundreds of nicknames for China’s president, Xi Jinping.
“Anything that’s gonna skew or contaminate the thought process of our young men and women who should normally be loyal to their own country — who should be critical of socialists and autocratic countries — I want to defeat that every time I get a chance to,” McCormick said.
One of RedNote’s primary stakeholders, Tencent — a Chinese social media and gaming giant — was recently designated by the Department of Defense as one of the corporations allegedly working closely with the Chinese military and intelligence. RedNote’s information, cybersecurity researchers point out, is also stored on Tencent servers.
“I just had a long, lengthy discussion on Facebook with a young person,” Alford told NOTUS on Wednesday night. “I sent her information about the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party and its influence on TikTok and its overall threat to America. And people just seem not to care.”
Alford said the young woman said she trusted China more than the U.S.
“It’s a dangerous place to be,” Alford continued. “It’s a perfect example of the danger that TikTok has done to the young minds of American people.”
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Mark Alfred and Samuel Larreal are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
Emily Kennard and Ben T.N. Mause, who are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows, contributed to this report.