“Hello everyone, my name is Ryan. I am a TikTok refugee. The US government is banning TikTok, so we are looking for an alternative… We are very sorry to disturb you. I hope we don’t have to stay here for a long time,” said Xiaohongshu user Ryan Martin in the video sent yesterday, apparently aimed at the app’s Chinese user base. He translated the statement into Chinese and used a voice-generating robot to read it in a video that has since been liked more than 24,000 times. “It’s okay, don’t interrupt. When you are lively, we are sleeping,” one of the most vital comments reads in Chinese.
The platform also features dozens of live audio chats in which American and Chinese users explain to each other, perhaps for the first time in many cases, how their communities work and clear up common misconceptions. Nearly 30,000 users have already listened to one of the most popular chatrooms.
While Xiaohongshu is not specifically mentioned in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary-Controlled Apps Act, which is currently being considered by the Supreme Court and which could result in a U.S. ban on TikTok, the law does state that any “foreign adversary-controlled app” could face a similar fate in the future . In other words, there is no guarantee that Xiaohongshu won’t follow in TikTok’s footsteps and be blocked by the US government.
TikTok’s ban may have catapulted Xiaohongshu into the U.S. spotlight, but the app has long had success in China. Founded in 2013, the Shanghai-based company operates one of the most, if not the the most fashionable platforms in China over the past few years and reportedly generated over $1 billion in annual profits in 2024. In brief, it is the hottest app in China that foreigners have never heard of before.
It also has a significant following among Chinese speakers abroad, from Chinese students abroad to Taiwanese to diaspora communities in Malaysia. Restaurants, popular tourist spots and travel agencies all over the world have started paying attention to this app because many Chinese tourists heavily utilize it to get local information and recommendations shared by other Chinese.
The app differs significantly from TikTok in several major ways. Although Xiaohongshu allows users to post brief videos vertically, much like TikTok, most of the content on the platform is slideshows of photos paired with text, so people often view it as more of a competitor to Instagram than TikTok. The AI-powered grid-shaped channel (called a “masonry grid” in professional tech circles) was so effective at driving engagement that larger social media companies like Tencent and ByteDance copied the design into their own products. Lemon8, the second popular social media app developed by ByteDance after TikTok, is widely seen as an attempt to imitate Xiaohongshu and his success.