The photo showed a young Chinese couple in a park in Adelaide, with a caption saying that they were celebrating their six-month anniversary. Alice immediately recognised the man in the photo as the partner of a friend of hers who she had messaged earlier that day. She was disgusted by the discovery of his two-timing, but impressed by the power of Xiaohongshu’s algorithm.

Alice didn’t follow her friend or her partner on Xiaohongshu, but despite that and her being 729 kilometres away from Adelaide, Xiaohongshu’s powerful combined geographical and personalised algorithm had shown her that photo.

Background and expansion

Launched in 2013 in Shanghai by Stanford graduate Charlwin Mao and Miranda Qu, Xiaohongshu 小红书 – also known as ‘Red’ or ‘The Little Red Book’ – has become the fastest growing social platform in China by 2023.^[1] Users share stories and photos from daily life, exchange life hacks and post reviews ranging from new lipsticks to interior design.^[2] Similar to Instagram, Xiaohongshu prioritises posts that contain photos and videos, and divides them into three main feeds for users: ‘Follow’, where users can view posts from people they choose to follow; ‘Explore’, where users can access algorithm-personalised posts by choosing their favourite content categories, from manicures to career development; and ‘Nearby’, where the app recommends content produced in the same geographical area as the user.

When it was first launched, Xiaohongshu was designed as an e-commerce platform providing overseas travel and shopping information for Chinese tourists abroad, offering them user-generated recommendations on where to eat, shop or stay and what to buy overseas. It was also the time when the phenomena of daigou 代购, shoppers buying sought-after goods overseas on behalf of consumers in China, caught global attention. As daigou relied on social media to advertise the products, it contributed to China’s first transnational e-commerce boom, with the sector recording 2.7 trillion RMB ($573 billion AUD) in 2014.^[3] The profits of the e-commerce boom not only prompted then Premier Li Keqiang to announce new economic policies to promote the growth of cross-border e-commerce, but also inspired Xiaohongshu to launch its own online store in 2014 selling overseas products recommended by its users.^[4]

With the increasing traffic to the app and growing diversity of content, Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce feature extended to products available in mainland China. The app combines the user-generated posts with e-commerce by allowing each post to embed a shopping link to the products. Users describe Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce model as ‘planting seeds’ 种草: the user-generated reviews plant the seed of desire for the items. This differentiates the platform from traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and newer ones such as TEMU, which still follow the Amazon-like structure that prioritises item search, rather than customer reviews.^[5]

Specifically, Xiaohongshu encourages users to produce anecdotal, visual and first-person reviews that directly address other users. These requirements constitute what marketing professionals call the Xiaohongshu format 小红书文案, which feature of a condensed, click-bait headline, a strong first-person anecdote, practical tips and suggestions, and address other users as ‘families’ 家人们, ‘sisters’ 姐妹们, ‘fairies’ 仙女们 and ‘little sweet potatoes’ 红薯们 (hongshu men, a pun on the name red book, hongshu 红书) which is the way Xiaohongshu fans describe themselves. With the development of artificial intelligence in recent years, Chat-GPT style AI tools have been developed to help users and marketing professionals write the kind of post favoured by Xiaohongshu’s algorithm.^[6] For Instance, to generate a negative review of a restaurant with unreasonably high prices and poor service, a Xiaohongshu-tailored AI would generate a post as below^[7]:

Title: NEVER EVER eat at this restaurant!

Today I want to share with you all my experience at a shady restaurant: xxx restaurant. Firstly, the prices were quite high, the food just so-so, and not worth the price. Secondly, the staff’s attitudes were bad – while we ordered, the waiter looked impatient, which made us feel very uncomfortable. Lastly, the dining environment was no good either, and it made you lose your appetite. In summary, never ever eat in this restaurant, I really don’t recommend it! #NotRecommend #BadReview #HighPrice

According to a senior Xiaohongshu director, the philosophy behind promoting such an anecdotal style of reviews is to encourage users to ‘genuinely share’ 真诚分享 their experiences: ‘When we first began the platform for offering reviews of transnational shopping, we aimed to present authentic views from real people on real items, and these reviews could be shown to another person with similar demands. When the person read these reviews, they’d find them useful,’ said ‘Monkey King’, the director of the CEO office. (As part of its corporate culture, all staff in Xiaohongshu address each other using nicknames – the CEO himself is known as Seiya, from the Japanese manga Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac).^[8]

However, the rise of AI generated content and ‘soft advertising’ on the platform raise doubts on the supposed authenticity of the reviews. Similar to other video sharing platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, Xiaohongshu has become a new platform for online influencers who collaborate with brands to produce advertisements disguised as authentic product reviews.

Some accounts will embed a link that directs customers to shops on Xiaohongshu, so that shoppers don’t need to quit the platform to complete the purchase. Among the brands that maintain accounts on Xiaohongshu are Dior and Chanel. In the first quarter of 2024, Xiaohongshu recorded over US$1 billion sales, with a net profit of $200 million.^[9] The platform records around 300 million active users per month and has been listed as most popular mobile app among Chinese people under thirty along with second-hand selling platform Xianyu 咸鱼 (No. 2) and video platform bilibili 哔哩哔哩 (No.3).^[10] But as the platform continues to grow, issues embedded in its technical and algorithmic structure have emerged, including social and political dilemmas that could worry the Party and government.

A feminist platform?

Since its founding, Xiaohongshu has accumulated a large base of young female users. According to data from a Fujian-based social marketing company, around 70 percent of Xiaohongshu’s users are young women, with 85 percent of them born after 1996 (‘Gen Z’) and half of them from China’s first and second-tier cities.^[11] The preponderance of women has created a space for women to interact and discuss gender-related topics from skincare routines to menstrual shaming.^[12] Notably, compared to other social media platforms such as Weibo, users of Xiaohongshu are more likely to follow and adopt recommendations of other users due to its nature as a review-sharing platform.^[13] Xiaohongshu’s operations team knows that growing their user community gives them more opportunities to monetise user-generated content. Taiwanese software engineer Nick who worked for Xiaohongshu in 2017 has told Bailingguo News – one of the top three podcasts in Taiwan – that during his time at the company, Xiaohongshu had around 200 staff, over half of whom were women.^[14] The majority of the team of operation engineers responsible for content presentation were women as well. According to him, Xiaohongshu would collaborate with cosmetic brands to offer training about makeup products to male engineers responsible for the algorithm so they could learn about trends. ‘It’s very useful. It helps you understand what’s the difference between lipsticks and lip glosses,’ he told Bailinguo News.^[15]

With users’ heavy focus on consumer aesthetics, Xiaohongshu has sparked debates over consumerism and gender stereotypes, including that which promotes the ‘pale, young and slim’ 白幼瘦 obsession among young women. In 2020 and 2021, a combination of user-directed recommendations and brand-driven promotion made the American fast-fashion brand Brandy Melville a symbol of youth, charisma and fashion. Xiaohongshu users coined the term ‘BM style’ based on the brand’s one-size-fits-all (so long as ‘all’ are slim) philosophy and posted photos and videos of themselves in Brandy Melville clothing. ‘BM style’ became the subject of a popular user-driven discussion on young women’s appearance, with many discussing ‘appearance anxiety’ 容貌焦虑 related to the promotion of the ‘pale, young and slim look’, leading to the hashtag ‘RejectAppearanceAnxiety’ 拒绝容貌焦虑’ on the platform in 2022. The discussion eventually inspired a new popular online buzzword, ‘beauty conscription’ 服美役, that likened the social pressures and gender stereotypes forcing young Chinese women to apply makeup, dress up and keep fit (slim) to military conscription.^[16] Today, the promotion of ‘pale, young and slim’ aesthetics co-exists on Xiaohongshu alongside discussions of appearance anxiety. The hashtag #AppearanceAnxiety, where people criticise the overemphasis on appearance has received 2.8 billion views. To put this in perspective, the hashtag #FatLoss 减脂  – for sharing tips on losing weight and building and maintaining a fit and thin figure – has received almost 13.4 billion views.

Still, the disproportionate number of female users on Xiaohongshu has fostered the assertion of individual identities and feminist awareness where users discuss important topics of women’s health that are still taboo in China’s mainstream society, ranging from menstruation and postpartum depression to motherhood. It creates a community where women offer peer support and tips to each other through first-person narrated posts with visual elements. For instance, the hashtag #menstruation had 1.5 billion views by end of 2024. Women used it to discuss the pros and cons of menstrual products from pads to menstrual cups, share their reviews of different hygienic brands and tell stories related to menstrual cramps.  You can find critiques of the social stigma around periods and explainers for women’s health issues such as the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer. In November 2024, the conversation around women’s menstruation sparked a public outrage against China’s major sanitary pad producers, including over their misleading advertising about the dimensions of their pads.^[17]

Such discussions are partly fuelled by the sanitary product industry itself. Many posts looked like an explainer of menstrual cycles with tag lines such as ‘girls must read’ or ‘it’s 2024, time to normalise discussions about periods’, yet they are in fact product placements, or posts from sanitary product brands themselves. There are questions about whether consumeristic ‘self-care’ rhetoric is truly feminist, not only on Xiaohongshu but also on Douyin other social media platforms (and which echo similar questions raised by and posed on foreign platforms such as Instagram). However, such public discussion of subjects like menstruation has encouraged women to speak openly about other controversial topics such as the desirability of child-free marriage^[18], violence against women, and reproductive strategies such as egg-freezing for young women who want to delay motherhood.^[19]

Besides engaging in topic-specific discussions, many women on Xiaohongshu will post about their daily routines, career progress and travel, often through well-edited and filtered videos. While some of them spark controversies and criticism for worshipping materialism and over-glamourising middle-class lifestyles in China’s first-tier cities, it can be argued that the content reflects the concerns of many Chinese Gen Z women. The discussions show that marriages and families are not a priority for this demographic group, which prefers to define success in terms of personal growth, mental health and career. An example is the series of ‘Living Alone 独居’ vlogs where Xiaohongshu users show off their single lifestyles: travelling alone, engaging in their nightly routines after work.^[20] Some have become influencers as their videos go viral – even as questions arise about whether some are just product placements disguised as lifestyle. The connectivity of social media platforms means that the ‘Living Alone’ series videos are also widely available and popular on platforms such as Douyin. Product placements or not, the key message of these videos remains that women can also live happily without being married or having children, and this has had a significant social impact in itself.^[21]

Is Xiaohongshu the next tool for Beijing’s foreign influence?

The platform has never officially acknowledged whether the name Xiaohongshu bear any reference to the ‘The Little Red Book’, the nickname given to Quotations from Chairman Mao published in the 1960s and was ubiquitous during the Cultural Revolution. And while it was founded for commerce, not political ends, there are concerns that Xiaohongshu will follow TikTok – a short video app that originated from China – and be manipulated to serve Beijing’s political interests abroad.

In 2022 in Taiwan, where the government is combating a multi-front mis- and disinformation assault from China, Tsai Ing-wen’s government banned public servants from downloading Xiaohongshu on government devices.^[22] But Xiaohongshu is popular with Taiwanese youth who use it as a reliable search engine for beauty and lifestyle information. The increased popularity of Chinese drama and entertainment shows among Taiwanese young people also drives downloads for access to updates and fan-made content.^[23] While politics isn’t a major topic of discussion on Xiaohongshu, a Taiwan-based Xiaohongshu user told Radio Free Asia’s Wainao – a longform news outlet for the Gen Z Chinese diaspora – they did occasionally receive recommended posts containing mainland nationalist content, including one encouraging them to read the People’s Daily.^[24]

In the United States and Australia, Xiaohongshu is widely used by Chinese students studying at universities and young first-generation migrants, who find it useful for locating Chinese restaurants, Asian grocery stores and Chinese-speaking trade services as well as researching immigration policies and sharing their immigration experiences.^[25] In Australia, Xiaohongshu attracts almost 700,000 users^[26], including Chinese Australian citizens and temporary residents such as international students.^[27] In 2021, I interviewed three Australians who are on Xiaohongshu.^[28] Sebastian, who first came across Xiaohongshu through his Chinese partner, treated the platform like a ‘Chinese Instagram’ where he posted his daily outfits in exchange for hundreds of likes – often much more than on his Instagram where he shares the same content. Julie, an Anglo Australian who began studying Chinese at 11 years old, was a part-time influencer collaborating with an Australian marketing company to promote Australian products to Chinese audiences. Michael, a corporate worker in Melbourne who speaks Chinese and married a Chinese international student, talks about his upbringing as a second-generation Chinese Australian on Xiaohongshu. He also shares his personal tips for new migrants and international students on job hunting and ‘fitting in’. Xiaohongshu has become a new platform for Australian politicians to engage with the Chinese Australian electorate. According to an ABC News report in November 2024, twenty politicians, ranging from federal members to local councillors, use the app.^[29]

Since November 2023, Xiaohongshu has been gaining attention from teenagers outside China, after a video of a male blogger who learned makeup techniques from Xiaohongshu users went viral on TikTok. They joined Xiahohongshu to participate in the new Chinese social media trend of ‘Open to blunt advice’ 听劝 which encourages people to take advice from strangers on the internet. On the platform, they asked for make-up advices and suggestions on improving their appearances.^[30] In January 2025, ahead of the possible TikTok ban in the United States, many TikTok users rushed to Xiaohongshu as ‘TikTok refugees’ as they considered Xiaohongshu to share similar functions as TikTok.^[31]

However, unlike TikTok, Xiaohongshu’s global influence remains limited. Just as Tencent WeChat was the international version of Weixin to mitigate data and social media regulations from China on users outside the country, Xiaohongshu also launched an international version for overseas users, which it calls REDNote.^[32] According to the descriptions of Xiaohongshu and REDNote on the Apple Store, the two apps take different approaches to data from users’ contacts. Xiaohongshu users could find their data from contacts could be collected and linked to their identities^[33], while REDNote users may still find the data being collected by the app, but the data would not link to their identities.^[34] While Xiaohongshu has its own X account and YouTube channel to promote the platform in English, neither have been updated since 2022.

Nevertheless, utility of Xiaohongshu as a travel guide for Chinese tourists has prompted the tourism offices of foreign governments to launch their official accounts on Xiaohongshu in hopes of boosting visitor numbers from China. In August 2024, Australia’s Northern Territory, which experienced a 10.5 per cent drop of domestic tourists in 2023 due to Australia’s ongoing cost of living crisis, tense competition against international markets and other factors, launched its Xiaohongshu account to promote destinations such as Uluru, attempting to attract tourists from China.^[35]

Bumps in the road

Despite its lifestyle focus, Xiaohongshu is exposed to political risks inside and outside China. It is subject to China’s toughening censorship regime and has been found to censor keywords relating, for example, to the 1989 Tiananmen protests and Xi Jinping.^[36] Internationally, despite being one of the most popular platforms Chinese travellers turn to for overseas trip advice, Xiaohongshu does not yet have an overseas branch, although it is planning to open an office in Hong Kong.^[37] This could partly be due to the fact that Xiaohongshu struggled to make a profit until 2023, almost a decade after it was first launched.^[38]

The platform has drawn attention from business analysts for inefficiently monetising its huge amount of content and large community of users to boost its e-commerce business, which is the foundation of its business model. Its existing e-commerce feature does not have a clear brand compared with TEMU’s low pricing and Taobao’s convenience, for example.^[39] China’s tightening control of private companies going public overseas may also have slowed Xiaohongshu’s international expansion.^[40] However, as the platform recorded its first profits and caught the attention of venture capital investors^[41], it is possible that Xiaohongshu will relaunch overseas, although the company has denied that it would go public in Hong Kong or the United States.^[42]

The lack of a corporate presence overseas has posed questions such as data safety for overseas users. In Australia, there have also been concerns about misinformation on Xiaohongshu regarding Australian elections and referenda, with media academics calling for the Australian government to develop policy regarding the regulation of such platforms.^[43] There are a number of issues the platform will have to address if it wants to follow WeChat and TikTok overseas.

The Xiaohongshu bubble

To some extent, Xiaohongshu serves as a kind of pop culture survey, capturing and presenting the latest social trends and phenomena in contemporary China through vivid and relatable stories from everyday life. For instance, the intensive work environment and Chinese economic slowdown sparked a new trend on Xiaohongshu in June with users posting about life after quitting their jobs.^[44] In these posts, users share photos of themselves walking out of offices, packing their luggage and moving back to their hometowns, and beginning afresh by farming, travelling or pursuing other personal goals. However, Xiaohongshu has also caught attention from the Cyberspace Administration Office of China for failing to regulate the increasing number of posts that celebrate an over-materialist lifestyle.^[45] Since 2021, as part of the China’s mass campaign for internet regulation, Operation Qinglang 清朗行动, Xiaohongshu have followed instructions from the Cyberspace Administration Office of China and suspended accounts and removed social media posts that involve ‘showing off money and worshiping wealth’ 拜金炫富.^[46] Many people simply find other ways to project images of success on Xiaohongshu: Chinese state media reported in November 2024 that a growing number of users on Xiaohongshu post doctored photos of themselves making speeches at the United National Assembly.^[47] In August 2019, following reports by several Chinese media that Xiaohongshu failed to regulate accounts that sell pirate luxury-brand items on its e-commerce platforms, and advertising posts for tobaccoes, China’s cyberspace authorities instructed Xiaohongshu to rectify its content, and the app was removed from all mobile app stores for a month^[48].

Xiaohongshu is also heavily invested in an algorithm designed to fragment its users into groups based on their interests and lifestyles. When a new user joins Xiaohongshu, the platform automatically activates its personalisation algorithm. In its algorithm’s guidelines, Xiaohongshu states that it tracks information on the users’ devices, but it does not specify what type of information it will track. It also states that it will track geolocation, view history and all activities on the app so that the algorithm can recommend posts and videos of interest to them. It then reacts to likes by creating a bubble that pushes more and more similar content into their feeds. Commercially, this helps users, whose tastes are thus validated, develop a strong sense of community, which increases their loyalty toward the platform, and both Xiaohongshu and brands can easily make money from users in such bubbles. But it also restricts the picture of modern China and overseas Chinese communities for users to that reflected in their bubbles, including notions of wealth distribution and inequality, especially as the app itself is heavily biased towards the middle-classes. Its invasive yet opaque access to users’ personal information on phones have also sparked concerns on privacy. For Alice, who discovered the partner of her friend cheating on her in Adelaide while she was using the app in Melbourne, the incident did not just alert her to the platform’s powerful algorithms, but also how Xiaohongshu could have unintended effects on Chinese people’s daily lives wherever they live.

*Alice prefers using a pseudonym to protect her identity

Notes

^[1] Newrank, ‘2023 New Media Content Ecosystem Data Report’, 2023新媒体内容生态数据报告, Newrank.cn, 5 March 2024, online at: https://edit.newrank.cn/detail.html?uuid=CD1017CC7A7C05F817C31DCA2F049C32

^[2] Eleanor Olcott, ‘Chinese Social Media Sensation Xiaohongshu Win Major foreign VC Backing’, Financial Times, 11 July 2024, online at:  https://www.ft.com/content/2d5f515f-d341-41c8-ace5-16a16cb33e35

^[3] Qu Yiping, ‘How does Cross-border e-commerce platform Work’, 跨界电商究竟怎么跨, People.cn, 1 October 2015, online at: http://paper.people.com.cn/rmzk/html/2015-10/01/content_1638473.htm

^[4] People Daily, ‘Li Keqiang hosted State Council Executive Meeting’, 李克强主持召开国务院常务会议,http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2015/0611/c1024-27135868.html

^[5]  Wing Kuang, ‘TEMU’s business model could only work in China. But they’re racing to replace Amazon in the global market’, ABC Online, 29 August 2023, online at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-29/temu-may-save-china-status-as-world-factory-amid-deflation/102724900

^[6] She Xiaochen, ‘AI post is dominating Xiaohongshu’, AI文案正在攻占小红书, Jiemian news, 17 July 2024, online at: https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/1261073.html

^[7] Tai Feng, ‘Xiaohongshu Generator-ChatGPT’, 小红书生成器-ChatGPT, online at: https://ai.xiaohongshu.live/

^[8]Zan Kuang Zhanyu,’In-depth Interview: Behind the Scene of Xiaohongshu’, 深度访谈：想不到你是这样的小红书, bilibili, 29 March 2021, online at: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1DK4y1T7na/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=9fdd674b2b019d60d5f6a64069e21ad3

^[9] Bloomberg News staff, ‘China’s Instagram-style Xiaohongshu crosses $1 billion in profit’, Bloomberg, 12 December 2024, online at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-12/china-s-instagram-style-xiaohongshu-crosses-1-billion-in-profit

^[10] QuestMobile, ‘QuestMobile Report: Xianyu, Xiaohongshu and bilibili top ranking of young people’s most favourite apps’, QuestMobile报告：咸鱼与小红书、B站并列高值年轻人喜爱三大APP, 1 July 2024, online at: http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/202407/01/t20240701_39055609.shtml

^[11] Qiangua, ‘QIangua data: Xiaohongshu’, 千瓜数据-小红书数据分析平台,Qiangua Data, online at: https://www.qian-gua.com/article/index/1/1.html

^[12] Hanzhe Chi, Renhao Liu and Jingye Pan, ‘Users’ behaviour under the uneven gender ratio of social media platforms: taking Hupu and Xiaohongshu as examples’, SHS Web of Conferences, vol. 50, no. 2 (2022): 1-5.

^[13] Zhuoli Wang, Wei-jue Huang and Bingjie Liu-Lastres, ‘Impact of user-generated travel posts on travel decisions: A comparative study on Weibo and Xiaohongshu’, Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights, vol. 3, no. 2 (2022): 1-11.

^[14] Nick didn’t reveal his last name in the show.

^[15] Bailinguo News, ‘The KK Show – 216 Xiaohongshu Algorithm Engineer Nick’, The KK Show – 216 小紅書算法工程師Nick, YouTube, 26 September 2023, online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN07i8Puqzs

^[16] Huiyan Chen, What’s behind Chinese Women’s ‘Beauty Duty’ Backlash?’, Jing Daily, 19 October 2022, online at: https://jingdaily.com/posts/beauty-duty-womens-rights-china

^[17] Koh Ewe, ‘Chinese companies apologise for ‘shrunken’ sanitary pads’, BBC News, 28 November 2024, online at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cev9ry341dyo

^[18] Jingshen Ge and Weiqi Tian, ‘Reimagining maternity: a multimodal analysis on the identity construction amongst Chinese ‘Married, child-free’ women in Xiaohongshu’, Social Semiotics, (2024): 1-12.

^[19] Jingshen Ge and Weiqi Tian, ‘Preserving choice: weaving femininity and autonomy through egg freezing discourse on Xiaohongshu’, Critical Discourse Studies (2024): 1-22.

^[20]Jia Guo, ‘Living-alone’ Wanghong: Women’s singleness as a Wanghong genre and the configuration of Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture’, Global Media and China, (2024).

^[21]Jia Guo, ‘Living-alone’ Wanghong: Women’s singleness as a Wanghong genre and the configuration of Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture’, Global Media and China, (2024).

^[22] Liang Jinghong, Chen Yuzhen and Xu Bosong, ‘Taiwanese teenagers on Douyin and Xiaohongshu: when national identity co-exists with Chinese social media trends’, 抖音、小紅書上的台灣青少年：當本土認同與中國社群媒體熱潮並行,Initium Media, 12 January 2023, online at: https://theinitium.com/article/20230113-taiwan-concerns-teens-chineseapps

^[23] Liang Jinghong, Chen Yuzhen and Xu Bosong, ‘Taiwanese teenagers on Douyin and Xiaohongshu: when national identity co-exists with Chinese social media trends’, 抖音、小紅書上的台灣青少年：當本土認同與中國社群媒體熱潮並行,Initium Media, 12 January 2023, online at: https://theinitium.com/article/20230113-taiwan-concerns-teens-chineseapps

^[24] Xu Jiaqi, ‘Postfeminism, capitalist traps or cultural united front work? We talked to the female users of Xiaohongshu in Taiwan’, 后女性主义？资本主义陷阱？文化统战？我们和“小红书“的台湾女性用户聊了聊, Wainao, 23 June 2022, online at:https://www.wainao.me/wainao-reads/xiaohongshu-in-taiwan-06232022

^[25] Shuyue Chen, ‘In the eyes of overseas young Chinese, Xiaohongshu becomes a ‘search engine’’, 海外中國年輕人眼中，意外成為「搜索引擎」的小紅書, Initium Media, 23 February 2023, online at: https://theinitium.com/article/20230223-mainland-overseas-students-xiaohongshu

^[26]Jenny Cai and Iris Zhao, ‘How Australian politicians are using emerging Chinese social media app Red’, ABC News, 3 November 2024, online at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-03/politicians-campaigning-chinese-social-media-red-xiaohongshu/104482116

^[27] Yuwen Jing, ‘Temporary Migrants’ Reactions to Immigration-related Content on Social Media Platform: Taking Australian Chinese Temporary Migrants on Red (Xiaohongshu) as An Example’, SHS Web of Conferences, vol. 190, no. 03018, (2024): 1-5.

^[28] Wing Kuang, ‘Australian influencers on Xiaohongshu, and China influence in their eyes’, 以小红书为阵地的澳洲网红，和他们眼里的中国影响力, Wainao, 13 October 2021, online at:  https://www.wainao.me/wainao-reads/Xiaohongshu-Australian-influencer-10132021

^[29] Jenny Cai and Iris Zhao, ‘How Australian politicians are using emerging Chinese social media app Red’, ABC News, 3 November 2024, online at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-03/politicians-campaigning-chinese-social-media-red-xiaohongshu/104482116

^[30] Shuyue Chen, ‘Please help me look good: when foreign internet users seek makeup advice on Xiaohongshu’, 请帮助我发光：当外国网友到小红书寻求外形改造, Initium Media, 22 February 2024, online at: https://theinitium.com/zh-hans/article/20240223-mainland-foreign-users-little-red-book

^[31] Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou, U.S. TikTokers flock to Xiaohongshu, baffling and bonding with Chinese users, Rest of World, 14 January 2025, online at: https://restofworld.org/2025/tiktok-refugees-rednote-xiaohongshu-chinese-users/

^[32] Xingin, ‘REDnote – Xiaohongshu’s international version’, 小红书国际版, Google Play, 22 December 2024, online at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xingin.xhs&hl=zh

^[33] Xingin, ‘Xiaohongshu’, 小红书, Apple Store, 7 January 2025, online at:  https://apps.apple.com/au/app/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6/id741292507

^[34] Xingin, ‘REDnote – Xiaohongshu’s international version’, 小红书国际版, Apple Store, 30 December 2024, online at: https://apps.apple.com/tz/app/rednote-%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85%E7%89%88/id6499068935

^[35] Northern Territory government, ‘Tourism | NT Budget’, The Territory, 2024, online at: https://budget.nt.gov.au/industry-outlook/tourism#:~:text=on%20international%20visitors.-,Domestic%20visitation,consumer%20behaviour%20and%20higher%20airfares.

^[36] China Digital Space, ‘Xiaohongshu Censorship Encyclopedia’, 小红书审查百科, China Digital Times, August 2020, online at: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6%E5%AE%A1%E6%9F%A5%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91

^[37] Karen Wong, ‘Xiaohongshu to set up office in HK’, Marketing-Interactive, 28 November 2024, online at: https://www.marketing-interactive.com/xiaohongshu-to-set-up-office-in-hk

^[38] Eleanor Olcott and Ryan McMorrow, ‘China’s Instagram-like Xiaohongshu makes first profit’, Financial Times, 25 March 2024, online at: https://www.ft.com/content/1716fcfd-31fd-4dc3-9475-f04283fe3eaf

^[39] ​​Beihe, ‘Xiaohongshu e-commerce’ buyers: their rise and challenges’, 小红书点上‘淘金’人：佛系、崛起和犹疑, CBN Data, online at: https://www.cbndata.com/information/292933

^[40] Eliot Chen, ‘Failure to List’, The Wire China, 19 November 2023, online at: https://www.thewirechina.com/2023/11/19/failure-to-list-chinese-ipo-china-companies-stock-market/

^[41]  Eleanor Olcott, ‘Chinese Social Media Sensation Xiaohongshu Win Major foreign VC Backing’, Financial Times, 11 July 2024, online at:  https://www.ft.com/content/2d5f515f-d341-41c8-ace5-16a16cb33e35

^[42] Pandaily, ‘Xiaohongshu Denies Reports of $20 Billion pre-IPO Financing Round’, Pandaily, 29 April 2024, online at: https://pandaily.com/xiaohongshu-denies-reports-of-20-billion-pre-ipo-financing-round/

^[43] enny Cai and Iris Zhao, ‘How Australian politicians are using emerging Chinese social media app Red’, ABC News, 3 November 2024, online at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-03/politicians-campaigning-chinese-social-media-red-xiaohongshu/104482116

^[44] Cailin Zheng, ‘Job-quitting vloggers: pretending to be relaxed is harder than going to work’, 假装松弛的离职博主，比上班卷多了, iFeng, 30 June 2024, online at: https://news.ifeng.com/c/8apzXQiFP4G

^[45] No. 10 Company, ‘Xiaohongshu has banned over 8,700 posts that involved ‘showing off money’, bloggers are united to oppose showing off money’, Paper.cn, 18 November 2021, online at: https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_15438246

^[46] Chi-hui Lin, ‘Chinese Social Media Companies Remove posts ‘Showing off Wealth and Worshipping Money’, The Guardian, 17 May 2024, online at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/chinese-social-media-companies-remove-posts-showing-off-wealth-and-worshiping-money

^[47] Guancha Jun, ‘China’s rich ladies are outdated, as ‘United Nations ladies’ are emerging on Xiaohongshu’, 国内假名媛过时了，小红书正在批量制造‘联合国名媛， Guancha.cn, 23 November 2024, online at: https://user.guancha.cn/main/content?id=1337163

^[48] Juan Hou, ‘Is it the end of Xiaohongshu?’, 小红书要‘黄’了？, People.cn, 2019, online at: http://paper.people.com.cn/zgjjzk/html/2019-08/15/content_1945098.htm

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Such collective, aggressive attitudes towards women’s rejections and criticism resemble the dominant sentiments in the Incel Movement in Western countries. Incel refers to ‘involuntary celibate’; the term started life as the name of an online safe space for women struggling to find romantic partners, but later became a self-referential term among young men who express rage at women for denying them sex.[1] Incels discuss their misogynist beliefs in online forums, where they might become radicalised by the manifestos of ‘incel heroes’ like Eliott Rodger, the son of a Hollywood filmmaker who killed six people and himself in 2014, and injured fourteen others, declaring himself ‘the true victim in all of this’. Andrew Tate, the American–British self-proclaimed misogynist influencer currently facing trial in Romania for rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women, is another exemplar.

Incels have developed their own memetic narrative system, categorising women as either Becky or Stacy, while men who have no difficulty finding sexual partners are Chads.^[2] Chad represents the supposedly desirable masculinity in American society: muscular and sexually attractive due to their genetically masculine features. Stacy is hyperfeminine, attractive and only dates Chads, while Becky is the average-looking feminist. These categories originated on Reddit but have been popularised in recent years.[3]

Online misogyny has been on the rise in China due to a number of factors. A crucial one is the underlying strong patriarchal attitudes and an increasingly gender-conservative media and educational system under Xi. This trend is signalled by Xi’s speech on the Women’s Congress in November 2023, in which he emphasised the importance of ‘love and marriage, fertility and family’ without discussing women as work forces. Another factor is the gender imbalance caused by the one-child policy and preference for male heirs, leading to uncounted female infanticides and nearly 34 million more males than females (the general sex ratio of 105.07 male to every 100 females). Social and economic stagnation over the last decade means that many have no hope of finding a girlfriend or wife, especially given that prevailing ideas around gender and marriage still uphold men as the main breadwinner, and women are perceived to have their desire for a man who has a wealthy background, higher education and property.

Research has shown that men from prefectures with a greater gender imbalance, and under pressure in the competitive marriage market to be able to offer a woman financial security, more likely to commit crimes with financial reward such as robbery, burglary, drug dealing and illegal business dealings. China’s most gender-skewed cohort – in 2021, the 15-to-19-year-old age bracket, with a male: female ratio of 116: 100 – coincides with those most inclined to misogynistic and anti-feminist views similar to those of Western incels.

While there is no equivalent Chinese term for ‘incel’, some comparable terms include the relatively outdated, playful and self-deprecating term diaosi 屌丝 (literally ‘pubic hair’), referring to young men who are disadvantaged in romantic or sexual relationships compared to those who are gaofushuai 高富帅 (‘tall, rich and handsome’), a term with echoes of ‘Chad’. Misogyny, including the blanket sexualisation and objectification of women, can be observed in the diaosi narrative and public discussion – such as scoring women based on their appearance, feminine traits and sexual experience – but the violence that characterises Western incel culture is mostly absent, with some exceptions, discussed below.

After Yang Li’s popular punchline ‘so ordinary yet so confident’, many Chinese women started using pu nan 普男 (‘ordinary men’) or pu xin nan 普信男 (‘ordinary yet confident men’) to describe average, misogynist and overly sensitive men. For example, a female user shared the screen shot of her WeChat conversation with a blind date, captioned ‘Let me show you a pu xin nan’. In the conversation, the man listed the traits he deemed attractive about himself, and after the woman did not reply to him for a few days, he asked her: ‘Are you worried that you don’t deserve me?’ . Similarly, Chinese women have also used words like zhi nan ai 直男癌 (‘straight-men cancer’) and guo nan 国男/蝈蝻 (literally ‘this country’s men’; the second way of writing the characters further belittles Chinese men as insects 虫) to criticise misogynist men.

Unlike in the United States and other Anglophone countries, there are no specific forums or platforms where misogynist men in China gather for the sole purpose of discussing their hatred of women. Instead, they manifest themselves on most of China’s social media platforms, including Sina Weibo, in different ways and for different reasons, often in response to reports of gender-related violence or other incidents. On Zhihu, the most popular user-generated question-and-answer website in China, questions related to gender issues tend to generate polarised debates, with misogynist answers and responses often dominating. For example, many users use ‘easy girl’ or ‘slut’ to answer the popular question ‘How do you feel about or understand the women who date or marry foreigners?’ Other sites where misogynistic discussion and interaction is common include the video-sharing site Bilibili, which hosts a subculture around Japanese anime consisting largely of young men, and Hupu, China’s most popular forum for sports fans, with more than 90 percent male users, who rank female celebrities on their appearances and discuss relationship issues in addition to chatting about sports. All of these platforms accidently evolved into sites with a significant presence of misogynist men because of their large male user bases and the attention economy; that is, a tendency for the most extreme or sensationalist content to attract the most attention.

There are high-profile KOLs (key opinion leaders) among the anti-feminist influencers and incel heroes. One is Zhu Zhou 煮肘 (often referred to as Teacher Zhu 煮老师 and Teacher Precious 宝宝老师). Zhu Zhou had around 495,000 followers on Sina Weibo in 2023. In his posts, he shows off his wealth, criticises feminists and the idea of female independence, promotes the practice of ‘successful men’ spreading ‘good genes’ by producing children with as many ‘high-quality’ women (younger than 23 years old, B-cup breasts, model-level beauty, more than 165 centimetres or pretty virgins more than 162 centimetres tall) as possible and, worst of all, claims that men should attack women who do not fulfil their ‘reproductive duties’ with sulphuric acid. Such violent threats against ‘non-cooperative’ women are not censored by platforms unless there is a mass reporting from platform users.

Different from the Western incel narrative begrudging women’s preference for the physical masculinity of ‘the Chads’, misogynist men on Chinese social media begrudge women for their desire to date or marry wealthy men, yet typically express envy rather than hatred against such men.

The combination of sexual and economic frustration is illustrated in comments made after the suicide of Su Xiangmao 苏享茂, founder of a successful Beijing IT company. Men on social media quickly shamed Su’s ex-wife Zhai Xinxin 翟欣欣 as ‘greedy and vicious’ for demanding a large divorce settlement; they blamed her for Su’s suicide, doxed and harassed her online. Such narratives of ‘gold-diggers’ harming ‘innocent men’ support their argument that Chinese women are greedy and evil.

Misogynist men on Chinese social media also take issue with feminists and the rise of feminism in China (despite acknowledging that at least feminists don’t ask for a bride price). They regard feminists’ speech and campaigns as ‘stirring conflicts between two genders’ 挑起性别对立 and ‘organised by “foreign agents” 境外势力 to subvert China’. Such antagonism against feminism is conveniently combined with nationalism and chimes with the Communist Party’s hyper-vigilance against social instability, its tendency to blame dissent on foreign agents and its own hostility to feminism. Influencers on Sina Weibo such as ‘God’s Eagle’ 上帝之鹰 and ‘Meridian Knight’ 子午侠士 repeatedly use such narratives to justify their trolling, harassment and reporting 举报 of feminists. For example, Meridian Knight wrote a series of posts accusing Chinese feminists, including Lü Pin 吕频 and other #MeToo activists, of being manipulated by ‘Western forces’ to destablise and destroy China. Due to their close alignment with the party-state’s nationalist, anti-Western and anti-liberal narrative, such speech is usually condoned and even promoted by mainstream state-run media outlets. For instance, in 2020 April, Beijing Evening News – an official media outlet operated by the Publicity Department of the Beijing Municipal Committee – issued an editorial that called out feminists as toxic and harmful to Chinese society. The state’s efforts to keep Chinese society stable in its family-based social structure and solve the issue of low birth rates also provides a supportive environment for sexist and misogynist opinions and statements.

As elsewhere, cyber bullying and online aggression also encourage offline violence. In 2020 December, a male university student attacked three female classmates with sulphuric acid in a class. While the exact reason for this attack was never publicised, in the comments section under the relevant news story, many assumed the victims were to blame for being ‘unattainable’ – meaning refusing their attacker’s advances – and celebrated the ‘punishment’ they got. Then there was the incident in June 2022, where four women were violently assaulted by a group of men in a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, Hebei province, after these women rejected one of the men’s sexual advance. Similarly, in September 2023, two women were violently attacked by a drunk man in Yiyang, Hunan province, after they refused to share their contact information with him. In both cases, the violent and graphic security footage where these men repeatedly and brutally dragged down, hit and kicked the women was shared widely on Chinese social media and shocked many Chinese citizens, especially women. Online public discussions demonstrated Chinese women’s anger and fear when facing the rise of misogynistic male violence. Due to the obvious brutality, there were hardly comments supporting the attackers, but the attackers were blamed for their gangster-like violence instead of the gendered violence they imposed on the women. However, there were comments blaming the women for ‘being stupid to fight back and infuriate the attackers’.

An increasing gender imbalance, decreasing social mobility and the dominant misogynist ideologies and discourses left flourished by the party-state means that more young men are likely to express their grievances online in misogynist discourses and that there will be more conflict around gender issues on Chinese social media. This is alarming because the social consequences are real and severe. While there is an official attempt to tamp down online violence in general, the misogynist discourses do not receive any special attention. Xi’s crackdown on civil society and the mainstream narrative of fearing ‘feminism as Western ideology’ means that feminist voices in opposition to misogyny are either silent or silenced. More research is needed to investigate this phenomenon, and governments and civil societies should work together to slow down, stop and reverse this trend.

Notes

[1] Debbie Ging, ‘Alphas, betas and incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere’, Men and Masculinities, vol. 22, no. 4 (2019): 638–57.

^[2] Donna Zuckerberg, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2018.

^[3] Lisa Cameron, Xin Meng and Dandan Zhang, ‘China’s sex ratio and crime: Behavioural change or financial necessity?’, Economic Journal, vol. 129, no. 618 (2019), 790–820.

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