"TikTok" refugees: US users move to China's RedNote and rush to learn Chinese

Millions of US users are joining "China Instagram", RedNote's social platform, ahead of a potential ban on the TikTok app in the United States. The problem, however, is that the default language of the RedNote app is Chinese (Mandarin).

So-called "TikTok refugees" are believed to be rushing to set up accounts on the Chinese social platform RedNote (full name "Little Red Book") ahead of the impending US ban.

Unless the US Supreme Court prevents it, the TikTok ban is expected to come into force on 19 January, in which case as many as 170 million American TikTokers would be disconnected from the app. But US citizens are flocking to China's RedNote, known in its country of origin as Xiaohongshu, in huge numbers without waiting.

China's RedNote's moment of glory

The sudden jump came in mid-January, when RedNote started to gain popularity. New users were noticeably more likely to choose TikTok as their answer to the question "How did you hear about us".

According to a Reuters report on 15 January, it is estimated that in just two days, more than 700,000 users have created accounts on the fast-growing RedNote application.

As a result, many Americans are now intensively learning Chinese.

"Ah, it's NOW you're learning Mandarin", the language learning app Duolingo announced on Monday on the X (formerly Twitter) platform.

The popular language learning app Duolingo has reported an increase of around 216% in new Mandarin students in the US compared to last year.

One of the main reasons why TikTok was banned in the US is the ongoing concerns about the malicious use of US consumers' personal data collected by Chinese companies.

Whatever the future holds for TikTok, the migration of US users to RedNote is an interesting phenomenon.