Taiwan opposition says ban of China's Rednote app is censorship

5/12/2025 16:11

Taiwan's opposition leader decried as censorship on Friday a government plan to suspend access for a year to Chinese social media platform Rednote, while the island's presidential office backed the plan.



Taiwan's interior ministry cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since 2024 when it unveiled the plan the previous day.



The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment.



"Many people online are already asking 'how to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,'" Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of Taiwan's largest opposition party, the Kuomintang, wrote on her Facebook page.



Employing an expression from China about use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to skirt the country's pervasive online censorship, Cheng, whose party favours close ties with Beijing, said banning the app was a major restriction of internet freedom.



This "only makes us lament that Taiwan's long-prized internet freedom and freedom of speech have already been restricted and strangled by the Democratic Progressive Party in the name of national security," Cheng added, referring to Taiwan's ruling party.