Democrats and Republicans united in April 2024 to pass a bill to ban TikTok in the United States. The bill, signed into law by President Joseph Biden, enacts a further clampdown on the reach of Chinese technology in the U.S., stating that it is “protecting Americans from foreign adversary controlled applications.”
Though TikTok is headquartered in Singapore, a new China-based app soon after went viral in its place. With a sense of curiosity, irony, or perhaps plain spite, more than three million Americans created accounts on RedNote, a Chinese app likened to Instagram and known in China as Xiaohongshu. Prompted by the threatened termination of TikTok’s domestic services in January, these so-called “TikTok refugees” found themselves digital tourists suddenly immersed in Chinese internet culture.
These rare, unmediated exchanges between everyday Chinese and Americans appeared to reflect the simple pleasures inherent to internet culture—cute kids, cats, and comedy. “The Chinese are so sweet, and so welcoming…I’ve made Chinese friends [that] I want to come visit,” relays one American user in a widely-circulated clip. In granting Americans intimate access to Chinese people and culture across the chasm of U.S.-China geopolitics, RedNote’s window into Chinese life stands in stark contrast to the often menacing depictions of China in U.S. politics.
On President Donald Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order to delay the enforcement of the ban on TikTok to April 5 and give the app an opportunity to find an American owner. So though RedNote’s moment was likely fleeting, the kind of popular exchange it produced has precedent. There is a long history in which Americans and Chinese have sought to remake the relationship between the two nations by forging new relationships with one another through the exchange of books, films, and most importantly, people.
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During the 1970s, people-to-people exchanges sought to bridge the gap between two nations that had lacked formal diplomatic relations since the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. For two decades, the U.S. imposed an economic and political embargo on the newly established PRC, a period during which all trade was banned, information was tightly monitored by the FBI, and overseas Chinese Americans were even prosecuted for sending remittances to their families back home.
American leftists and progressives sought a break from U.S. Cold War foreign policy by launching “friendship delegations” to China in the early 1970s. For instance, Black Panther leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown traveled to Beijing as part of an anti-imperialist tour of Asia, and members of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars toured the Chinese mainland. Expanding these efforts after its formation in 1971, the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association (USCPFA) sent more than 5,000 Americans to China in the 1970s. In 1979, one USCPFA delegation sent 22 Detroit youths to Shanghai and Beijing, where they played basketball with high schoolers, picked vegetables at communes, and performed American songs and dances at talent shows with their Chinese peers.
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a group first founded in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam, described these early delegations as an attempt to “break through the wall of ignorance,” which had long separated Americans from China.
Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing further peeled back this so-called “bamboo curtain,” sparking a cultural wave of fascination with the Chinese mainland. China-mania spanned the ideological gamut: Black Power activists brandished copies of Mao’s little red book. Friendship stores selling specialty foodstuffs, silks, and Maoist tchotchkes emerged to meet demand from both Chinese immigrants seeking familiar comforts and Americans fascinated by the exotic wares. Even Bloomingdale’s got in on the action, unveiling in 1971 a “China Passage” boutique selling bamboo and rattan housewares. But despite their differences, this array of actors shared a basic assessment: Americans had something to gain from engaging with China and Chinese people.
More importantly, these ambassadors carried the belief that American and Chinese people from all walks of life had the power to shape diplomatic relations. As I Wor Kuen, a Chinese American revolutionary organization that mobilized support for normalization in the Chinese community put it: “The masses make history and it is the masses who will make normalization a reality.”
On the surface, today’s “TikTok refugees” bear little resemblance to the friendship delegations that came 50 years prior. While many 1970s counterculture youth viewed Mao-era China as a model for social revolution, young Americans today have mostly avoided identifying with foreign political models despite their historic dissatisfaction with U.S. capitalism.
And yet, in pulling back the curtain on contemporary Chinese life, RedNote has inevitably held up a mirror to American ways of living. “Do you think USA will ever have worker led revolution?” One Chinese user queried. “Why do you eat like ur healthcare is free,” another joked. Others asked if Americans really had to pay for ambulances, or whether that was just government propaganda. But the most popular bit on RedNote has been a satire of U.S. national security claims about China, with Chinese netizens dead-panning about being individually assigned “Chinese spies.” A viral TikTok video features an American similarly promising to “dropship my DNA to the front door of the Chinese Communist Party before I watch an Instagram reel.” The comedic exaggeration is clear, but the bit is also a gesture to something deeper: Americans are skeptical about their government’s national security claims against China and open to seeing the country and its people through a different light.
In granting Americans both a window into contemporary China and a mirror to their own country, these exchanges also reflect the extent to which Americans continue to be siloed from Chinese people and culture. China has yet to enjoy the cross-cultural appeal that Korean dramas and Japanese anime have found across the Pacific. Netflix’s controversial 2024 remake of Three-Body Problem—the popular Chinese science fiction franchise—reflects the notion that Chinese cultural works require repackaging before reaching American audiences. In this context, RedNote’s breakthrough has been claimed by both Chinese state outlets and netizens as a soft power win—with one commentator on the Chinese video platform Bilibili likening the exodus of Americans to RedNote to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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The historical allusion is fitting in an era of U.S.-China relations that a range of political commentators agree amounts to a new Cold War. Though largely confined to talk of supply chains, infrastructure, and security, these antagonisms inevitably trickle down to cultural and social exchange. As U.S. popular opinion of China hit an all-time low in 2023, the number of Americans studying in China dropped to around just 800, paling in comparison to its peak of 25,000 a decade ago.
Should TikTok be compelled to find a new American owner, RedNote’s moment in the spotlight may prove to be short-lived. And yet, in the quotidian moments of cultural exchange, inside jokes, and social commentary that the platform has afforded, we see an echo of the promise of those early years of U.S.-China detente, when a rising generation of Americans and Chinese dreamed of a future outside of the confines of Cold War antagonism. As Bertha Thomas, a member of the 1979 Detroit youth tour wrote on her return to the United States: “A most interesting phenomenon occurs when… precocious American teenagers and young adults come into contact with oodles of Chinese teenagers and young people. What transpires is instant rapport and friendship.”
If nothing else, RedNote’s viral moment indicates both the rarity—and dire necessity—of such contact.
Mark Tseng-Putterman is a writer and historian working at the intersections of Asian American social movements, Cold War militarism, and US-Asia relations.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
