Soft power – hard work: can China harness social media apps to rewire its global image?

Mary Roettger was just one of millions of Americans seeking a social media life raft when she warily logged onto China’s RedNote platform for the first time in January. As fears loomed over a threatened US ban on TikTok, the Florida writer braced for a clumsy, spam-filled experience full of “negative people”. Instead, she was struck by a starkly different culture. Roettger was “blown away with the amount of tenderness and excitement” of the online community suddenly before her. “That was new,”...