In 2024, the Biden administration of the United States pushed for a comprehensive ban on TikTok on the grounds that it posed a potential threat to national security. This move not only caused widespread controversy in the international community, but also aroused dissatisfaction and backlash from a large number of users in the United States. When everyone thought that the direction of the incident would be as envisioned by the Biden administration, surprisingly, a large number of original TikTok users subsequently flocked to another Chinese-based social platform, Red Note (Xiaohongshu), and carried out content creation and cultural interaction in it, presenting a complex digital migration phenomenon. This study takes this phenomenon as a starting point to explore the tension between state behavior and user behavior in the context of Sino-US technological game, and analyzes the logic of international relations and social psychological mechanisms revealed by the migration between platforms.

The mainstream view in academia interprets such events from a realist perspective, emphasizing national security, technological sovereignty and political containment. However, this article attempts to jump out of the perspective of state-centrism and instead use liberal theory to construct a more explanatory analytical framework from the dimensions of non-state actors, user subjectivity, information exchange and institutional trust.

The study found that although this article tried to use a liberal perspective to interpret the phenomenon and tried to prove liberal theory, the reason behind it was still driven by realism. However, realism theory alone is not enough to explain the emergence of this phenomenon. Therefore, this article advocates that the subjectivity of users and platforms should be re-examined in global digital governance, and liberalism and realism should be combined to comprehensively consider the occurrence of events from a comprehensive and global perspective.