TikTok ‘refugees’ bolt to China’s alternative as possible U.S. ban looms

American users fearing a potential TikTok shutdown because of the popular video-sharing app’s ties to Beijing are rushing to China’s social media app Xiaohongshu as an alternative.

The frenzy to find a substitute before the threatened ban next week has made Xiaohongshu, which means “Little Red Book” in English, the top downloaded app in Apple’s App Store.

Lemon8, which like TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, appeared second in Apple’s list of top free downloaded apps on Tuesday, trailing only Xiaohongshu, colloquially referred to by TikTok users as RedNote. ByteDance faces a deadline later this month to sell or shut down its popular American subsidiary under a bipartisan law signed by President Biden last spring.