A significant number of westerners have started using the Chinese domestic audience app Xiaohongshu. This has led to significant cross border communication between the two user bases.
Question is whether this state of affairs will be disrupted by action from the Chinese side. Alternative outcomes could be segregation of users by language, location, national ID, or into separate apps.
Resolution criteria will be at my discretion, primarily drawing from reporting by SCMP, WhatsOnWeibo, or RestOfWorld on action taken to disrupt the current interaction.
Note that topic-based censorship/moderation will not be sufficient.
The steps must be to prevent the current interactions at scale, regardless of whether small scale interactions (eg Americans choosing ‘Chinese’ as their preferred language) can or do occur.
Reserve right to change criteria for 48 hours, based on feedback.
Update 2025-03-10 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Extension Clause:
If major restrictions (i.e. notable segregation or banning measures) are in place at the market’s closing date, the market closing may be extended by a few weeks to determine if these measures are permanent.
1,000I’m not aware of any segregation/banning measures. At present this looks on track to resolve YES.
Caveat: the Two Sessions are on, and moderation/censorship often increases around this time. VPN accessibility goes downhill, etc. I don’t think we’ll see an about-face on policy, but it’s possible.
If there are major restrictions as at close date, I’d be inclined to extend closing by a few weeks to see whether they remain, and resolve based on the state of affairs then. The market wording wasn’t written with temporary restrictions in mind. But I’ll be guided by traders on this. (Ideally before it becomes relevant!)
@JoshuaWilkes it would depend on the scale of the ‘curation’. Fully replacing all English/Chinese with algorithmic generated simulacra would for example imo qualify. Shadow banning, setting a minimum karma threshold, etc would depend on the implementation.
If there Is something, I expect it to be pretty obvious. Chinese digital regulation doesn’t tend to do subtlety.
The crux of the question is whether XHS will be regulated like other apps that have a large overseas userbase (Douyin, LinkedIn, etc), or whether it’ll be allowed to continue to exist as-is. (Like Weibo, WeChat, or HelloTalk.)
I appreciate there’s a degree of ambiguity here. To give some reassurance, I won’t participate in this market.
“We believe that no matter what platforms you use, it’s a personal choice and we encourage and support people-to-people exchanges,” ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said when asked whether China would “strengthen censorship on content by foreign users due to national security interests”.