TikTok, RedNote and the Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet

The Chinese social media app RedNote is full of cute, heartwarming moments after about 500,000 American users fled to it last week to protest the looming U.S.government ban on TikTok.Calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” these users paid the “cat tax” to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos.

They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is a country? That most Americans have two days off every week?Americans also posed questions to their new friends.“I heard that every Chinese has a giant panda,” an American RedNote user wrote.

“Can you tell me how can I get it?” An answer came from someone in the eastern province of Jiangsu: “Believe me, it’s true,” the person deadpanned, posting a photo of a panda doing the laundry.I spent hours scrolling those so-called cat tax photos and chuckled at the cute and earnest responses.This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people.

More important, RedNote demonstrated how competitive a random Chinese social media app can be from a purely product point of view.With access to an online population of one billion and an army of hard-working, resourceful engineers, China’s internet platforms are world-class in their design, functionality and user experience — as is demonstrated by TikTok and now by RedNote, or Xiaohongshu in Chinese....