As a Taiwanese American living in Taiwan, I’ve been eyeing the TikTok ban and the (unexpected, to me) surge of interest in XiaoHongShu aka RedNote with varying degrees of anxious eye-twitching.
A friend’s husband’s friend said that his XHS developer friend is working overtime to figure out a way to segregate the Americans from the Chinese users, which, honestly, is tragic-funny to the extreme.
No, our governments don’t want us talking to each other, what a surprise. If not for my other concerns, I’d make a RedNote account just out of spite.
The thing is, I don’t feel safe performing acts of conspicuous rebellion, so I will not be making an account there.
I saw the “in retaliation, I will be directly giving all my personal information to China” posts and, welp.
The thing is, I’m not sure how many Americans are aware that there are people’s whose entire job is scouring the Chinese bits of the internet and making sure it’s all copacetic. According to CCP standards, that is.
So whereas us authors like to joke that we’re possibly on a watchlist somewhere due to our internet searches and that the crime and horror authors likely have an alphabet agent assigned to them… well, unfortunately, that sort of thing is a wee bit more likely in China.
And you don’t want to be asked in for tea by the authorities.
Even my own parents don’t understand what it means when the CCP passes a law that sounds completely ridiculous.
Like “you could get actual jail time and huge fines for writing sexy fiction”.
It’s always “no one is actually going to go after all the people writing sexy-times”… until, they are.
Recently, they’ve started cracking down hard.
There were Chinese writers who were on Haitang writing sexy stuff. Never mind that Haitang and its servers are Taiwan based.
Over 50 plus authors were hauled away for “tea” and fined. At last check, at least one had at least five years of jail to look forward to. Others had bail set at bankrupting amounts, from what I’ve heard.
Recently, iirc, the CCP passed a law that makes it treasonous to claim Taiwanese sovereignty and to encourage or endorse Taiwanese independence.
…so yes, technically that means they could haul you in for owning a Taiwanese flag. For treason.
Or they could get you for claiming to be “Taiwanese”.
Which, in case anyone is paying attention, is a pretty serious offense in any country.
A BlueSky Taiwanese American mutual made a RedNote account and she said her “note” was placed under review for saying she’s Taiwanese American.
She then said she couldn’t make an image text with either the words “Taiwan” or “Taiwanese” in either English or Mandarin.
Someone sent her a RedNote “tip” saying “you must support the One-China policy” and that Taiwan belongs to China.
Best Beloved went to China on a work trip years back and iirc she got her WeChat account suspended because she’d accidentally said something the censors didn’t like.
Big Daddy is watching you. It’s not just a joke there.
Your reminder that not having a functional WeChat in China is like losing access more than half of what’s necessary to get around there. Many small vendors don’t carry cash; they’ve gotten so used to paying with WeChat. It’s used at restaurants, vending machines, taxis…
In short, if you don’t care about human rights or genocide or freedom or anything that might possibly trip a censor’s eye, then it’s probably okay to be giving your information to the CCP.
If you’re never planning on going to China, or even stopping there on a layover, then it’s probably safe to give the CCP an in.
Nowadays, my reading almost exclusively comes from JinJiang, which is Chinese owned and therefore subject to the CCP’s increasingly tight grip.
I got a message via the app reminding me to support the “pure net movement”. So that would be “no descriptions of anything below the neck” and “no kissing with tongue”. Yes, if you type out “butt” or “tit” in Mandarin, that’s gonna get censored into 口口 and if the censors think you’ve gone over the line in steamy (like, licking someone’s neck), then your work gets locked.
Reading between the lines of author notes and how the fiction has been evolving, it’s clear what the censors want to see: nothing that could possibly be framed as criticism of the government; nothing that could possibly be seen as praise for other countries, especially Japan and America; and a distinct uptick in ‘empire empire empire’.
Empire is bad, except when China does it.
A friend in Shanghai once told us that the CCP is aware of every single VPN option; the only reason the VPNs work is because the CCP allows it when it suits them to. They just don’t crack down on users unless they want a reason to haul you off for tea.
It’s always “it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine” until it’s not fine.
And people always think “they’re not gonna go after all of us”. But, your reminder that Chinese officials have always been totally okay with scything down entire swathes of people for Reasons.
Reasons including “putting the fear into the rest of the population” and “this is a good excuse to get rid of the intelligentsia” and “why not, power feels good”.
Note how I’ve been careful to say “the CCP” or “Chinese officials”.
I think the average Chinese netizen is probably a great friend to have. I’ve mostly encountered kindness from the people I’ve met and known in China.
The Chinese are not a monolith, but in this case I’m okay with generalizing that they’re funny, they’re sharper than tacks, they’re intelligent and wise. I think having access to RedNote is a wonderful thing and I hope that this might walk back some of the damage done by US politicians re: anti-Chinese sentiment.
Do I think it likely? Probably not. I don’t know that the average person ready to beat up an elderly Chinese woman is either going to use RedNote or would be swayed either way. But I can hope because hope is free. Free even if somewhat fanged.
That said, because the CCP, I suspect it could be dangerous to just hop onto RedNote without being aware that Big Daddy is always watching and there are consequences to the watching.
The Chinese often say that the internet is not a place outside of governance and it’s good to keep in mind what CCP governance could look like.