美中全球议题对话项目

这次采访是用英语进行的。

Eleanor M. Albert: Today our guest is Cole Highhouse. Cole is a first year PhD student studying at Shanghai International Studies University.  Originally from Ohio, he has been living in Shanghai for two years. His research interests include social media and influencer studies. Cole, welcome to the show. I'm really pleased to have you.

Cole Highhouse: Thanks for having me.

Eleanor M. Albert: I start my podcasts by asking a little bit of a personal question. So, before we launch into our conversation about Chinese social media platforms and their intersection with U.S. users, I was curious if you could tell us how you came to study Chinese social media and communications in China more broadly?

Cole Highhouse: I didn't have much of a plan after my master's [degree], and I did my thesis on TikTok and China's image on TikTok. I don't really know where it first came from exactly. I studied in Hong Kong during my undergrad, so I always had somewhat of an interest, and then it just seemed like a really interesting topic at the time. So when I was coming toward the end of my master's program, my advisor initially presented me with the idea of going to Shanghai and studying further. At the time, I was really unsure about going back to school, so I actually ended up coming here as an instructor for the first two years. I was given the opportunity to see if I liked the city, see if I liked the school, feel it out. And in this past year I transitioned over to a student role.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's very cool. Let's start digging into some of the meat of the conversation. TikTok has grown to have a tremendous following in the United States. Before we talk about some of the legal aspects of TikTok's future, how does the international version of TikTok, because there is a Chinese TikTok—which is Douyin—how do the two compare? How would you compare the international version of TikTok to what Chinese users are experiencing on Douyin? Are there similarities? Differences?

Cole Highhouse: I haven't used TikTok in a while, so apologies if I get anything wrong. But for people that are unaware, even with a VPN inside of China, you are unable to access TikTok. Then outside of China, to use Douyin, you need a Chinese phone number. That's how it's locked off on both sides. The two apps are essentially the same in their design and their style, but they are completely different in terms of user base and content. In appearance, Douyin is basically identical, but it has more of a maximalist app design like most Chinese apps do.

I would say one of the most interesting differences is it allows you to filter by location. So I could only see Douyin content from Shanghai or post it in Shanghai. And then, historically what the biggest difference has always been is Douyin's e-commerce is massive. TikTok is catching up to that, or at least e-commerce is becoming more popular in America. But, coming to China made me realize live streaming e-commerce is on a whole different scale here, and that's huge on Douyin.

Eleanor M. Albert: Very interesting. In the lead up to the U.S. ban on TikTok, there was this big phenomenon of “TikTok refugees” and their migration to actually another Chinese social media platform, which is called Xiaohongshu and in English is RedNote. Other than appearing to be somewhat similar to TikTok, how would you describe or characterize Xiaohongshu as a platform compared to TikTok and Douyin? Are there differences in the types of content that are prevalent on there, the users? Are these similar ecosystems or are there differences that are intriguing?

Cole Highhouse: In terms of similarities, they both have short form video content, obviously, but nowadays, every platform has short form video, so that doesn't really differentiate you. I think it was funny when all of this first started or when I first heard people saying, "Oh, the Chinese version of TikTok," because in China I feel like we kind of always talk about Xiaohongshu as an Instagram alternative. I would say it's actually most accurately described as an Instagram meets Pinterest meets a little bit of Reddit maybe. Visually it looks very much like Instagram except there's a much heavier focus on text: providing people with travel advice or product reviews or any sort of recommendation. That's where the Pinterest and Reddit aspect comes into play.

Eleanor M. Albert: From the Chinese perspective, since you are in Shanghai, with an influx of U.S. users on a platform that I think seems to be predominantly Chinese user-based, what were some of the conversations like? How was this refugee migration, so to speak, seen or interpreted by Chinese users?

I heard anecdotes about Chinese people asking for help on their English homework or having very frank conversations about differences in political systems and all these discussions about pulling down the veil on what life is really like in China. So, I'm just curious in a time when there isn't a lot of access to these two different communities, here is a virtual space that filled some of that in.

Cole Highhouse: To that point, you have this big influx of Americans on the platform. And I would say, specifically too, a certain type of American that may be doing so to spite the government or for various other reasons, but a certain type of person is moving onto this platform. Then, you have a lot of Chinese users who are very eager to share positive aspects of their country, whereas Americans are usually the first people to criticize America. I think it's that clash that was interesting, which maybe makes this more beneficial from the Chinese perspective.

There were just a lot of questions because people can do just text posts on there, a lot of very black and white questions like “What does China think about gay people? What does China think about Black people? What's healthcare like in China?” All of these very black and white questions.

Then something too about RedNote to keep in mind is it started off very heavily skewed toward female users and then particularly female users in urban and first tier cities. While that's sort of balanced out over the years, it definitely still is more that type of app. So the responses that you're getting to these questions are more skewed.

Eleanor M. Albert: Of course. I want to talk a little bit about how Chinese social media platforms function and how they fit into the thinking about social media in general from the United States. There are concerns about protection of user data, censorship, propaganda. In thinking about these various platforms, particularly Xiaohongshu, and then a place like TikTok versus Douyin, what should we know about the prevalence of either censorship or propaganda on these platforms? For starters, there are so many users. It's not that every single user is an agent of a state or operating under some state initiative, but I think there is of course a naturally different relationship because of the political system under which these platforms have been created and operate.

Cole Highhouse: You realize that content moderation is a whole different type of beast on Chinese social media platforms. Then just also being on here and being on these platforms, I've seen the ways that Chinese people sort of learn to skirt around these rules or avoid the automated content moderation, whether it's putting emojis or blurs over cleavage or something to avoid overly sexual content.

The thing is, these Chinese platforms, yes, they're private companies, but at the end of the day, they're always required to align with government standards. A lot of the time, these systems are just automated, and your posts will be taken down with not a lot of explanation or maybe minimal explanation. I think it is interesting… I've seen a lot of Chinese users on RedBook or RedNote commenting, or there was this similar copy and paste message of “remember to stick to Chinese standards and promote positive things” and something along those lines, and comments like that would get a significant amount of likes—3,000, 5,000.

Eleanor M. Albert: I want to pivot us a little bit and think about how at a time when top level Sino-U.S. relations are a little uncertain, these interactions between American and Chinese users on RedNote actually were seeming to be a quite authentic form of people-to-people exchanges. What do you see as being positive from this? And then are there negative implications or risks that might be underlying?

Cole Highhouse: Like I said earlier, China has more to gain from these interactions with the way that I've seen it play out. In America, we really don't interact with Chinese popular culture much at all, aside from the occasional thing that breaks through like we saw with the Wukong video game (Black Myth: Wukong) or something like Genshin Impact. So the average American really understands China through ancient history, Chinese food, kung fu, high school history class. And not to say it's necessarily wrong, but people that never really bother to look into China much past that.

So coming over into this platform, you're combined with younger Chinese people that maybe do consume a lot of American culture, maybe feel more pride in their country and sharing the advancements that their country has made.

With all that in mind, I do think there's good in people-to-people exchanges in whatever circumstance. It's probably better for that to happen more organically and more over time and more subtly, whereas in this case, it was this very big rush, and like I said earlier, these black and white questions asking about a whole country or a whole country system and then having a few people from Shanghai give you an answer and sort of building your idea of a country off of that.

Eleanor M. Albert: Absolutely. With Trump's delaying of the U.S. law that would ban TikTok, has there been a decrease in this type of activity on RedNote (Xiaohongshu), or do we think that this ecosystem with having U.S. users on a predominantly Chinese social media platform is going to continue? There's still a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds for TikTok, but also, as you said earlier, if we think about the type of American user that is going on to Xiaohongshu, is this a phenomenon that you think will be sustained?

Cole Highhouse: It's interesting to note that RedNote changed their name in the U.S. app store to English. Before it was in Chinese characters. They actually added a translate option for all text posts and all comments. It only translates Chinese to English at the time, but that's super convenient for me when I use the app.

But as far as Americans leaving the app, I think definitely yes, although I don't have the numbers. Just based on my explore page or my own experience, people using an app that's primarily in Chinese, they probably are just going to get more bored with it over time when they can't read 90% of the posts.

Also, I think the big question with social media is monetization. There's not really a future for monetization on RedNote with it being in China. Of course, a few people will always stick around or find the app really interesting and want to stay around. But I think the most important thing that came out of this is just heightened awareness of Chinese social media. Before this happening, I think the existence of RedNote was pretty unknown in America.

Eleanor M. Albert: I think in America, we live in a tech ecosystem where you have a few companies that are the pioneers behind all the big platforms, and everyone migrates there. But I think it's definitely sent some shockwaves in saying that there are alternatives that you might not know about. Perhaps not surprisingly though, that other alternative was Chinese, and I think it lends to a lot of bigger conversations about global communications and technology and the politicization and securitization of those things.

If you have any other final thoughts on this phenomenon… The future is pretty tenuous for what American users will have access to in terms of Chinese social media. But it's interesting to see that even as there might be silos being created, there still are these opportunities for intermixing and mingling.

Cole Highhouse: I think in theory, Americans coming on RedBook [RedNote] is such an awesome thing. I hope in the future for more organic interactions on social media and for this to be more common, but who knows?

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.