Why RED?
Xiaohongshu (RED) functions as a digital public space organised around consumption practices. Dining experiences, purchases and everyday lifestyle choices are continuously documented, compared and recirculated. The platform has over 300 million monthly active users, the majority based in mainland China, with the remainder consisting largely of overseas Chinese, international students and short-term travellers. This distribution means that a single dining experience in London can almost simultaneously enter a Chinese social media environment and be inserted into a new evaluative system.
Source: Qian-Gua Data 2025 Xiaohongshu monthly active user profile report.
The reason for choosing RED is not its scale alone, but the way value is generated on the platform. In Week 7, our discussion on algorithms demonstrated that visibility is not passively granted but collectively produced through user actions. Clicking, saving, doubting and debating all constitute forms of hidden labour that enable content to circulate. As Evan Malmgren writes in Big Data’s Hidden Labor (2021), users’ attention, time and interaction are converted into value and folded back into commercial systems. Under such a mechanism, content gains visibility not because it is positive or authentic, but because it continues to be triggered. Negative reviews therefore do not disappear. They move, accumulate metrics and are kept alive through algorithmic amplification.
Within this structure, RED becomes a site where offline experience is converted into a digital object. Once London Haidilao is photographed, uploaded and debated, its value no longer emerges only at the dining table. It is instead produced in the act of being viewed, argued over and compared. Visibility becomes influence; influence alters consumption; consumption then returns to shape offline business performance — new footfall, heightened search activity, renewed attention. It is within this cycle that RED becomes the crucial point where negative evaluation can be translated into economic meaning.