From TikTok Ban to RedNote Rush: The Unexpected Cultural Exchange Between US and China
A fierce online censorship battle in the US reveals a deepening divide between unreasonable power and an awakened public.
Perhaps fitting for the world we live in today that a hashtag ratio was the reason that TikTok was no longer deemed viable by the United States political class and banned this week in Congress. During Israel's unprecedented response to the attacks of October 7, the hashtags #freepalestine and #Palestine dramatically outnumbered their #standwithIsrael and #Israel counterparts, primarily on the popular TikTok platform. In damage control over overwhelming online support for Palestine on social media, pro-Israel groups with influence over US Congress pushed for the legislation to be drafted in March 2024 to restrict the app, resulting in this weeks highly publicised ban. The fallout has been significant.
Unable to corral the foreign owned social media platform or control its database, the US bipartisan establishment alarm bells have been ringing about TikTok for years. Slandered as foreign owned “spyware”, it is only since the abhorrent actions of Israel in Gaza have been captured streaming through thousands of short videos, echoed by the ratios on social media and the mass public demonstration across the globe, that TikTok has been deemed a liability to the curated pro-Israel narratives of US elites and their “AIPAC babysitters”. In late 2023, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt famously said, “We have a major TikTok problem” in a leaked recording regarding negative online public perception towards Israel’s massacre in Gaza. Months later, in response, the bill to remove TikTok was introduced, with the ban taking place this week amidst a storm of chaos.
The response was swift, articulate and brutal. “Fascist countries ban apps”, TikTok Personality “Soupytime” opened her 12.5 million views worth of scathing rebuke at the US government, echoing a chorus of Gen Z led uprising against what is perceived as the deprivation of basic freedom of expression. As the scale of the undertaking became apparent, the realities of incomes lost, small businesses compromised, and both sides of an entire generation pissed off to no avail, the debate spilled out from both sides of US politics, resulting in millions leaving the platforms of the digital United States for the platforms of digital China.
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In acts of protest, fear and pure curiosity, more than three million “TikTok refugees” seeking sanctuary flooded onto Chinese social media app “Xiaohongshu”, also known as “RedNote”, opening up a remarkable cultural exchange between users on the platform. Video titles like “How Americans found out the US government was screwing them over” and “Americans interacting with Chinese directly” popped up everywhere. Americans were remarking at the abundance and affordability of Chinese food, the affordability of its emergency services, even quoting the friendly, inclusive and humanitarian nature of RedNote’s community guidelines compared with western social media platforms.
For some time TikTok has been the scapegoat of establishment politicians in Washington, who are concerned at rapidly changing narratives and public perceptions that threaten established narratives.
The unprecedented cultural exchange backfired for those wishing to censor Americans. Shutting down TikTok raised the backs of millions of Americans, and even saw them migrate to a Chinese platform where they see people filling their trolleys with fresh produce for $20USD, or calmly explaining what affordable medical bills look like, while experiencing that the majority of the platform isn't a divisive mess being willingly conducted by some rogue billionaire chaos merchant. A total failure of political awareness. Clips of crying young Americans lamenting that they work multiple jobs just to survive were interwoven with wow moments at videos depicting the scale and nature of China’s development. Uyghur lawyers were clarifying western perceptions on Xinjiang, Zionists were getting cooked with simple facts -- and we saw a confluence of two great cultures wash over one another on RedNote, forming a new cross-cultural ideological stream that won't easily be diverted.
This upheaval caused by the TikTok controversy comes at a bad time for US power and those who currently cling to it. A younger US population has been tempered in times of distress across their nation, echoed throughout the west, and are no longer susceptible to legacy narratives that are slung from crumbling towers of a decrepit system. Children born wedged between 9/11 and the Global Financial Crisis are now adults in a world where their parents suffer from economic hardship, social destitution, and PTSD from fighting in two decades of the Global War on Terror -- where population centers are dying and dead, fair opportunities removed, and no one has a memory of what a great America looks like to begin with.
For three years, after the GFCs the GWOTs and the endless insistence on arming, overthrowing or sanctioning some far flung area of the globe, after the emptiness of Obama’s “hope and change”, Trumps chaotic MAGA 1.0, and Biden’s single term of war and ghoulishness, Americans have witnessed one politician after another line up to defend a “too big to fail” bank, send billions to arm a foreign conflict, even cutting off their nose to spite the nation’s face to protect the state of Israel during its unconscionable genocide. With everyday people now talking about issues that matter to them everyday, ranging from cost of living to Zionist influence over political decisionmaking, the US propaganda machine, quality checked by the ADL and AIPAC, is struggling to impose a pro-Israel mindset on the people of America, and their retaliation via the TikTok ban was not a solution, but a call to arms for millions.
While US powerbrokers toil to try and regain the ability to manufacture consent on a national scale, the population is more tentative than ever. Increasingly aware of the reality they face, Americans are better equipped with the ability to identify the source of their frustration, and are imbued with the experience to define it. Banning social media has proven futile, and while the AIPAC possessed Congresspeople lick their wounds, a new section of American society is awakened to the disconnect between themselves and those who have captured their democracy in the halls of power. A state-of-mind echoed by those living in Western democracies around the world.
China is now leading the world in many metrics, but it has somewhat struggled to connect with the West at a soft power or grassroots level. That situation has rapidly changed, and the transmigration to RedNote has helped to ensure this connection, instantly chipping away at poorly constructed US propaganda that China, and the Chinese people, are an inevitable enemy with incompatible values. Millions of Americans are discovering a new reality, shattering the expensively thin mirrors that hold up the negative illusions of China and the people who live there, and destroying the morbid orthodoxies that demand things like the need to live with rapacious and predatory healthcare or the expectation of the masses to support the interests of a genocidal nation state before their own. TikTok refugees have discovered that everyday Chinese people share more in common with them than they do with their elected current leaders, and Chinese people have seen a human and relatable side of the West that has been previously difficult to experience. A significant and powerful exchange in social media history.
Back in America IRL, Biden eventually backflipped on the TikTok ban, buffeted by freshly re-minted President Donald Trump’s politically motivated support for the platform. In the shadow of the first attempted assassination of TikTok, US criticism of China's great firewall and lack of political freedoms now rings a little more hollow, the American people feel a little more powerless knowing a new truth, or as a random RedNote users words that wisely rang out, “just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you have a choice. Your freedom is an illusion”. It plain to see that Western tech platforms are kept behind insulated and bottlenecked systems of control by increasingly authoritarian Western governments seeking to impinge on their people's freedoms by limiting their choice, and the TikTok ban was emblematic of that control on display.
The current personality types that commandeer leadership roles in America and the West bend perceptions of freedom and competition, looking to hold on to their power by censoring and removing elements they cannot control to retain their control of an evaporating narrative. As power slips through the fingers of a clenched fist, in the dark and bleak landscape of overt censorship meted out by the powerful, a flame of popular digital resistance has ignited. The TikTok/RedNote crossover has only amplified the peoples narrative, and this voice can only grow despite efforts to stop it. Continuing to challenge those who overtly seek to push agendas for the powerful few, over heeding the desperate calls of the awakened masses of the many.
Magnificent try well written 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It appears that both the American and Australian public will need to be constantly vigilant if any shred of democracy in both countries is to survive . Massive forces of authoritarianism are ranged against us .