DeepSeek, TikTok, RedNote: How Did China’s Internet Become So Cool?
The popularity of apps like TikTok, RedNote and DeepSeek shows that China has an advantage over America — not only in technology, but also in vibes.
Bloomberg
By Tyler Cowen
Jan 30, 2025 | 812 words | ★★★☆☆
Amid all the excitement, surprise and anxiety over China’s DeepSeek R1 AI model, I would like to make a broader yet neglected point: To many young Americans, and I say this as an old American, DeepSeek is downright cool. It is not that they are enamored of the Chinese Communist Party, but rather that they see the Chinese internet as hip and intriguing.
How did this happen? First and foremost, because China’s internet actually is cool. Politics aside, Chinese products and services have an increasing flair and originality. I am not an avid TikTok user, but it has a magnetic presence that no US video site can match. According to the company, more than half of all Americans are active Tiktok users.
Personally, I would rather play around with my favorite AI models. But I know that if I dip my toe into TikTok waters, much of what I find will be funny, compelling and, yes potentially addictive. The site allows scope for both experimentation and social deviance. And if many in America’s establishment disapprove, so much the better for the younger rebels. They might even share their elders’ national-security concerns, but they have learned to use coded language to talk about politics.
TikTok was briefly shut down earlier this month, and the site faces an uncertain legal future. America’s internet youth started to look elsewhere — and where did they choose? They flocked to a Chinese video site called RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, the name of the parent company. RedNote has more than 300 million users in China, but until recently barely received attention in the US.
And when young Americans visited RedNote, they were undoubtedly struck by an obvious fact: It is not the kind of site their parents would frequent. The opening page is full of Chinese characters, as well as shots of provocatively dressed women, weird animal and baby photos, and many images that, at least to this American viewer, make no sense whatsoever. Yet Chinese and American youth interact frequently there, for example trading tips for making steamed eggs properly.
I don’t plan on spending much of my time there, but that’s part of the point — and helps explain its appeal to American youth.
As for the AI large-language models, DeepSeek is a marvel. Quite aside from its technical achievements and low cost, the model has real flair. Its written answers can be moody, whimsical, arbitrary and playful. Of all the major LLMs, I find it the most fun to chat with. It wrote this version of John Milton’s
Paradise Lost
— as a creation myth for the AIs. Or here is DeepSeek commenting on ChatGPT, which it views as too square. It is hardly surprising that this week DeepSeek was the top download on Apple’s app store.
The model also has a scrappy and unusual history, having been birthed as a side project from a Chinese hedge fund. Whether or not that counts as “cool,” it does sound like something a scriptwriter would have come up with. And at least on American topics, DeepSeek seems more candid than the major US models.
Another possible reason for the ascent of China into the ranks of cultural coolness has to do with the lack of competitors. Not so long ago, it was common for a certain kind of American teenager to develop an affinity for France, England or possibly Germany. Europe was seen as more intellectual, more artistic, more “cultured” — not just in the historical sense but in the more ordinary sense; the difference between America and Europe was the difference between Wonder Bread and a freshly baked baguette.
Today much of that is no longer true, and so Europe has lost some of its romantic appeal. Besides which, it is axiomatic that anything your parents thought was cool when they were your age, you don’t.
There are other cultures that have had moments of popularity in America, of course. Latino culture has seen a growing wave of interest, especially in the 1990s, coinciding with greater Latino immigration to the US. Those connections are still there, but they are not so new and exciting any more.
When it comes to both economic power and global influence, China is America’s only peer country. While the differences between the two nations and cultures are obvious, both Americans and Chinese are in my experience friendly, open, forward-looking and business-friendly. The cultural gap is by no means unbridgeable, and I say this as an American who has visited China 11 times (though not since 2019). China has the talent, scale and resources to create online experiences that will appeal to Americans.
There is so much commentary on the financial, geopolitical and national-security implications of DeepSeek that Americans are in danger of overlooking the obvious: China has stolen a march on us — not only in technology, but also in vibes.
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——新英文外刊，每日精选优质外刊文章，文章高质、话题丰富、时效新鲜，始于2016年3月。
