Chinese platforms like Xiaohongshu look to Southeast Asia as the U.S. applies more scrutiny

TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, may have just figured out how to keep its platform operating in the U.S. Yet the next frontier for China’s tech platforms will likely be closer to home. 

Xiaohongshu—known internationally as RedNote—is gaining traction across Southeast Asia as a new generation of Chinese tech firms try to expand beyond their home market. The Southeast Asian country of Malaysia is the platform’s second-largest market outside of China. Other Chinese tech giants, like ByteDance and Tencent, are also boosting the nation’s digital offerings in the realms of e-sports, e-commerce and artificial intelligence. 

In 2025, China’s trade surplus from digital services jumped to a record high of $33 billion, according to data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. 

Southeast Asia has become one important testing ground for China’s tech companies, offering young, mobile-savvy consumers and lighter regulatory pressure than Western markets. 

Experts told Fortune the country’s tech firms will likely adopt a more low-key approach in Western markets like the U.S., where officials are more wary of Chinese platforms, due to concerns about data privacy and national security. 

This is most clear in the long saga over TikTok, as U.S. officials argued the platform could send U.S. user data back to Beijing, and interfere with recommended content to spread disinformation. Last month, TikTok finalized a deal to create a new U.S.-based entity of the social media app, ending the threat of a ban that has loomed over the platform since 2024. A new joint entity, of which ByteDance will hold a 19.9% stake, will now hold U.S. user data and retrain the recommendation algorithm.

“While Chinese tech platforms may aspire to commercial success similar to TikTok’s, they are also wary of attracting the same level of political and regulatory scrutiny,” Jian Xu, an expert on Chinese media studies at Australia’s Deakin University, tells Fortune. Instead, they may opt to focus on selected regional markets rather than pursuing full-scale global popularity.

Southeast Asia, made up largely of emerging and middle-income economies, is also more open to adopting Chinese tech than mature Western economies like the U.S. or Europe. That’s partly due to proximity: Trade and migration has given Chinese culture and a Chinese diaspora a foothold in the region.

RedNote, for instance, is widely adopted in Malaysia and Singapore, primarily due to their large ethnic Chinese communities, adds Wang Zheng, a visiting fellow in the Media, Technology and Society program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

The rise of Chinese tech

China’s tech ecosystem is undergoing a “structural transformation”, moving from an export model “historically rooted in manufacturing and hardware” to one “increasingly defined by platform governance, service coordination, and socio-technical systems,” says Xu, adding that the country is increasingly exporting service-based infrastructure that can shape global flows of ideas and commerce. 

Last June, Xiaohongshu opened an office in Hong Kong, its first outside of mainland China, to kick off its overseas expansion. Chinese e-commerce platforms like Taobao, Temu and Shein have also found immense success beyond its shores. In 2025, Temu’s share of the global e-commerce market jumped to 24%—on par with American delivery giant Amazon.

TikTok Shop, an in-app feature allowing creators to showcase and sell products directly within the TikTok app, has also become a global e-commerce juggernaut. Momentum Works, a Singapore-based venture research firm, estimates that TikTok Shop’s gross merchandise value last year hit $64.3 billion, nearly double from the year before. Southeast Asia GMV, in particular, also doubled year-on-year to hit $45.6 billion.

Yet TikTok Shop has had its own problems in foreign markets, and not just in the U.S.: In 2023, Indonesia ordered social media platforms like TikTok to stop providing e-commerce services, forcing the brief suspension of TikTok Shop in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. TikTok solved the problem by opening its wallet, buying a 75% stake in local e-commerce platform Tokopedia. 

Apart from the private sector’s push to go global, Beijing’s government officials have also pledged support for Chinese tech firms to export their digital offerings.

“We must adhere to opening up, promote win-win cooperation across multiple sectors, (and) expand exports while also increasing imports to drive sustainable development of foreign trade,” Han Wenxiu, the deputy director of China’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, said at a conference last December.

Security concerns and language barriers

Yet, some pundits have flagged the potential security risks of using Chinese tech platforms, given that some China-based apps, like Xiaohongshu, must comply with Beijing’s regulations on data, including storing and processing user data within the country. 

Zheng of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute says these claims aren’t entirely unfounded. Xiaohongshu, for example, uses the same platform for both domestic and international users. (Many Chinese apps, like Douyin, offer a separate international version for foreign users, which aren’t subjected to the same “security risks”.)

Language barriers could be another barrier to adoption for Chinese platforms, if only temporarily. “As media exposure grows and the translation function removes language barriers, uptake among non-Chinese users may increase in other regions,” says Zheng. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com