Even before China’s DeepSeek rocked the foundations of the American AI establishment, another Chinese app was racing up the popularity rankings. Shanghai-based RedNote – a social-media, lifestyle and e-commerce app, renowned for its stylish if fluffy content – has been a leading beneficiary of the US TikTok ban, welcoming half a million US “refugees” in recent weeks, notes the Financial Times.
There are plenty of heartwarming stories about American and Chinese users enjoying “a unique exchange” at a time of “deteriorating geopolitical ties”, but online conspiracy theorists are also out in force, claiming that RedNote is a dangerous propaganda tool.
If so, it’s pretty heavy-handed – the company’s basic details read like the Chinese are having a joke. Founded by a bloke called Mao, RedNote’s Mandarin name, “Xiaohongshu”, translates into English as “Little Red Book”, an apparent homage to the Communist leader’s famous compilation of quotations, says Reuters.
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In China, the Instagram-like app has 300 million users, mostly young and female. Yet its origins owe a good deal to US culture. Co-founder Charlwin Mao – no relation to the late party chairman – is a Stanford graduate and a former employee of Bain Capital, says the FT. When he was thinking of a name for his start-up in 2013, he settled on “Little Red Book” as a twist on the “little black” version and because it referenced the colours of his alma maters – “both bastions of US capitalism”.
Born Mao Wenchao in 1985 and raised in Wuhan, the Our China Story website – which dubs him “Mr Perfect” – describes Mao as a promising student, who won a place to study “mechatronics” engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and received a job offer from Bain even before he graduated in 2007. That opened up whole new worlds. “Mao’s greatest passion was travelling” and in short succession he visited more than 20 countries. His lightbulb moment came when he realised there was a dearth of shopping guides for the millions of other Chinese tourists then venturing abroad. In 2013, he teamed up with a fellow expat – marketing executive, Miranda Qu – in a bid to fill the gap, says Quartz.
“The two became friends after they bumped into each other at a Macy’s in Boston when she recognised his Wuhan dialect.” They tested a few ideas, including the travel guide, before finally settling on a photo-sharing app focusing on lifestyle content. Mao later said he was influenced by his Stanford connections. One of his peers turned out to be Evan Spiegel who went on to found Snapchat; another classmate’s boyfriend was a co-founder of Instagram.
RedNote's moment in the sun
RedNote’s parent company, Xingyin Information Technology, has never lacked backers, says The New York Times. As of last July, Crunchbase estimated it raised nearly $1 billion from backers including GVC Capital, HongShan, Alibaba and Tencent – the latter two arch-rivals reportedly both invested to prevent the other from acquiring the start-up. These days its value is put at around $17 billion, says Fast Company, and it’s considered a likely IPO candidate. The recent influx of TikTok users appeared to catch the company by surprise, says Reuters. Mao and co are reportedly “scrambling to find ways to moderate English-language content and build English-Chinese translation tools”.
There’s a “fiesta feel” to the online community right now and something “beautifully subversive” about seeing Americans on the site, says The Spectator. Jumping into another Chinese app because you disagree with your government’s ban of another is “a commendable F-you”. Sadly, the anarchy is unlikely to last given tense US-China relations. “RedNote’s high moment” of popularity “may be brief”.
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