GuShiio.com 
It is very interesting to read the reconciliation between Chinese and American netizens on Xiaohongshu.
For example, a foreign girl asked how much China girls spend a month.
The most favorable reply was: In the past, Xiaohongshu earned 50,000 yuan a month and couldn’t live; now that foreigners come, they can even pass 500 yuan.
This reply contains an old stalwart and a latest trend, and understands everything you understand.
Hundreds of thousands of TikTok refugee switched to Xiaohongshu, and Chinese and American netizens launched an unexpected interaction. It was an unexpected and beautiful event in early 2025. Whether it will be a flash in the pan is still hard to say.
After a comprehensive comparison of Chinese and American netizens on work income, cost of living, medical procedures, education system, etc., the biggest feelings of netizens from the two countries can be summarized as follows:
The life of Americans is not as good as imagined, and the life of China is not as bad as imagined.
The first impression of netizens from the two countries is both real and one-sided.
If you directly compare Xiaohongshu with TikTok, it is suspected that Tian Ji is horse racing. Xiaohongshu is an exquisite life display platform that emerged in Shanghai. The users are mainly young women from first-tier and second-tier cities, and it is known as Hermes per capita. TikTok is a beautiful version of Douyin, and users are even more depressed.
As we all know, the people on Douban are the most literary and artistic.ZhihuThe people on the Internet are the cleverest, and the people on the Little Red Book are the richest.
Another possible cultural difference is that netizens here have always had a tradition of being hospitable and caring for face, and are accustomed to showing their guests as much as possible, while netizens there have trained critical thinking since childhood and are accustomed to criticizing the status quo.
Putting these factors aside, we can still see that netizens on this side or that side still have layers of veils in understanding each other. This can’t help but make people sigh. Fifty or sixty years after the Internet came out, thirty or forty years after computers entered the home, and ten or twenty years after smartphones were popularized, the information cocoon room is still so hard.
Chinese and Western countries have their own sweetness”
The formation of the information cocoon room is inseparable from the stereotypes created by the media framework. Media reporting through specific frameworks will highlight certain characteristics, thereby shaping or strengthening public stereotypes of specific things. This problem exists in media in various countries, intentionally or unintentionally.
The early realization of this stems from my personal experience. At the end of 2003, I was responsible for financial reporting in a comprehensive media company, and I came across an article on WSJ introducingMorgan StanleyHow to recover bad debts in China.
The article describes that Morgan Stanley’s China executive Lan Dezhang took his assistant Howard in the office of local officials and asked them to urge local companies to pay back the money. When local officials prevaricate in official language, Howard would take out a stack of photos from his bag, line them up one by one, and place them in front of the officials. He would ask, Which one of these is your boss? Let’s go find him. Then officials will surrender.
This story is so vivid that I use it as a model model and ask colleagues in the department to learn from it.
Coincidentally, half a year later, I had the opportunity to come into contact with this field. At that time, Morgan Stanley and two Chinese institutions jointly established Kelly Asset Services Co., Ltd., which was specifically responsible for its non-performing asset disposal business in China. The chairman is Lan Dezhang from Morgan Stanley, and the general manager is the Chinese side. Later, due to a dispute over the distribution of benefits, the Chinese company and Morgan Stanley went to court.
When I was covering this incident, I had contact with multiple Kelly employees. According to them, Lan Dezhang and Howard are current employees of Morgan Stanley. They have never disposed of non-performing assets before and have basically not participated in specific business in Kelly. Howard sometimes participates in some preliminary meetings to bring a foreigner to facilitate negotiations. He is actually the bodyguard hired by Lan Dezhang; Lan Dezhang himself is a China hand, but he has never gone down to the front line to do business.
In other words, in the eyes of Kelly employees, it is almost impossible for the images in the above-mentioned report to be true.
Lan Dezhang in the incident,Bank of ChinaThe world is quite famous. He was an expert in Ming history. Before coming to China, he taught postgraduate courses on China’s banking system at Princeton University. After coming to China, he served as a director of many banks. He was once appointed chairman of Shenzhen Development Bank and became the first foreign chairman of the banking industry in mainland China.
In the summer of 2003, Lan Dezhang delivered a speech in Nanjing, saying that a bank’s business is trading risk. This formulation was refreshing to domestic banking practitioners at that time. According to previous domestic textbooks, banks are special enterprises engaged in currency transactions. Since then, it has become an industry consensus that banks are companies that price risk.
Authoritative media reports on such a well-known person may also be biased. I don’t know who told the previous story, but because it was exciting enough, it was accepted by the media and recognized by readers, including me.
In retrospect, its success lies in catering to the stereotypes of the media and some readers. It takes deep experience to discover that story is too good to be true; it takes more conditions to do rigorous verification. For ordinary readers, the requirements are too high.
But stereotypes are much easier.& ldquo; It is widely circulated that China cannot afford tea eggs and Americans ignore their adult children, which makes the parties laugh and cry. There are many similar stories.
One comment on Xiao Hongshu ‘s Sino-US reconciliation is that China has really been hacked by Western media for too long and seriously. Every China netizen is willing to contribute to let more foreign friends understand the real China. rdquo; This problem is not unique to Western media.
Writer Han Shaogong once lived in a place called Maqiao and found that the local residents have a characteristic. Whether it is sugar or fish or meat, everything delicious can be described as sweet. He believes that this is because the Maqiao people have been eating only enough for a long time and are unable to fully understand and distinguish the taste of food.
Later, Han Shaogong discovered that Westerners also use hot to express irritating tastes, whether it is pepper, mustard, garlic or pepper. His conclusion is that everyone has their own cognitive blind spots, and Chinese and Western countries each have their own sweetness.
Beware of another luxury car blowing up the street”
Before Xiaohongshu became popular, Zhihu was a base camp for netizens to act tough. He was in the United States and became popular just after getting off the plane. Xiaohongshu came from behind. I bought limited edition models at random on the Champs Elysees, which was obviously upgraded.
The exquisite life displayed by netizens Xiaohongshu in the Sino-US reconciliation is also a demonstration of the great achievements of reform and opening up, which helps break the prejudice of foreign netizens.
It is worth noting that Xiaohongshu breaks some stereotypes, but under the guidance of algorithms, it is easy to form new stereotypes. You know, the powerful power of the algorithm makes it even more difficult to break the new information cocoon room once it is solidified. In the information cocoon room, people are only exposed to information that is consistent with their own views and interests, which will strengthen existing perceptions and prejudices, thereby deepening stereotypes.
Responsible media should be comprehensive, objective and rigorous, and need to be wary of Sino-US reconciliation becoming another luxury car that blows up the streets.
The luxury cars that South Koreans see on the streets of Shanghai are real. The bombing of luxury cars on the streets itself is not against the law and discipline. Even if they cannot earn face, they cannot be right or wrong.
However, how to reduce the possible negative effects of luxury cars bombing the streets is the responsibility of the media. This negative effect is mainly due to international observation. It is not that people from friendly countries will be surprised, but that it will affect the positioning of developing countries.
Foreign netizens saw China from luxury cars bombing streets and the reconciliation of small red books. While they were amazed, they also wondered: Is this still a developing country? However, China’s official statement has always been clear and firm: China is a developing country.
Judging from the most important economic indicators, China’s per capita GDP in 2024 will be approximately US$13400, far lower than that of the United States and South Korea. The per capita GDP of the United States in 2023 will be US$82,800; the per capita GDP of South Korea in 2023 will be US$33,000.
According to the “2023/24 Human Development Report” released by the United Nations Development Program, China ranks 75th in the world in the Human Development Index in 2022.
The reason for the gap between objective data and the impressions of foreign netizens is simple. China’s unbalanced development problem is prominent. The official statement is: China has a vast territory, with obvious regional imbalances in economic development, particularly the urban-rural dual structure, and a large income gap between urban and rural residents.
In fact, after completing the comprehensive battle against poverty, China is still committed to preventing poverty from returning to poverty. Excerpts from official data show that as of the end of 2024, more than 5 million monitoring objects across the country have been assisted to prevent return to poverty and steadily eliminate risks. The rest have also implemented assistance measures, firmly maintaining the bottom line of preventing large-scale return to poverty. rdquo; This is also the real China, which is more worthy of attention than luxury cars blowing up the streets.
China emphasizes that it is still a developing country based on its own objective development status and also has some positive significance in international economic and trade.
Under some international trade agreements and frameworks, developing countries can usually enjoy certain preferential tariff policies.
International organizations and some developed countries will provide technical assistance and cooperation projects to developing countries.
As a developing country, certain trade protection measures can be reasonably set up in the early stages of development of some emerging and infant industries.
When faced with international trade frictions, as a developing country, it can adopt reasonable countermeasures and coping strategies in accordance with relevant rules and international practices.
Reform and opening up have made great achievements, but we cannot drift away. Of course, the small red book interaction between Chinese and American netizens is still a wonderful thing to be gratified. As central media said: Openness, exchanges, and mutual learning are the unchanging themes of mankind and the heartfelt desire of people of all countries. The friendship between countries lies in the friendship between people. We have reason to believe that in the rolling tide of economic globalization and the interconnection of the online world, the community with a shared future for mankind, with me and you in me, will only become closer and will surely move forward hand in hand. rdquo;(This article was first published on GuShiio.com Stock Market Smart App, author| Hu Runfeng, Editor| Liu Yangxue)
