| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a tick-tick-boom roundup of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. The Little Red Book Versus the Big Blacklist | As TikTok's China-based owner, ByteDance Ltd., tries to run out the clock of a US ban, many of the app's users — as Jessica Karl noted in Monday's newsletter — have been signing up for RedNote, another Chinese social media platform, and being welcomed by its 300 million users, most of whom are in the People's Republic. As Catherine Thorbecke says, "Something rare and beautiful is happening on the platform as Chinese and American youth break barriers online — helping each other with homework, comparing local grocery prices, or just exchanging photos of their pets." In a collateral benefit, subscriptions to Duolingo's Mandarin Chinese courses have increased by 216% over this same period in 2024. Still, says Catherine, "It's only a matter of time before political reality strikes. The Xiaohongshu Spring won't last." Why not? "National security fears over TikTok due to its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., are only magnified on Xiaohongshu," she writes. "TikTok is at least a separate app from ByteDance's China version, Douyin, whereas Xiaohongshu is a singular platform. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities are unlikely to welcome swarms of young Americans culturally influencing its youth." And then there's the name. Though the company denies it, Xiaohongshu can be read as a back translation of the crimson tome entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong that circulated during China's cataclysmic Cultural Revolution. It was known outside China as the "Little Red Book," which in Mandarin is 小红书, or "xiaohongshu" in pinyin. Aren't the so-called TikTok refugees rushing to RedNote aware they are entering the sphere of a surveillance state? Catherine says they are cynical enough to know this. They've lived with Facebook and Google mining their personal data for years. And they are hard-nosed enough to believe that the US government takes an active interest in their activities too. What they aren't likely to be comfortable with is the limitations on political speech on RedNote. Says Catherine: "Those equating Beijing's internet policies to America's — as broken as they may be — are in for a rude awakening. And they should recognize that their new Chinese friends participating in political discourse are at greater risk when a crackdown inevitably comes." You Can't Be Too Rich, But You Can Only Be So Short | Hindenburg Research shook the plutocratic foundations of India in 2023 when it accused the Adani Group of "the largest con in corporate history" because of its improper use of offshore tax havens. That wiped out more than $100 billion of share value even as the conglomerate and its founder — Gautam Adani, once the second richest person in the world — denied the charges. That was the start of months of turmoil and investigation, as Andy Mukherjee has chronicled. This week, however, Hindenburg founder Nate Anderson is shutting down his gadfly operation. Anderson wasn't in it to be a market policeman — though that is, in essence, what Hindenburg was in a world of overoptimistic upsellers. His short-selling venture — founded in 2017 — existed to make money by betting against flawed enterprises. The payoff can be immense but, says Chris Hughes, "You need to be right, you need to be vindicated, and you need to prepared for intimidation to continue despite that." Even though the Adani controversy is roiled with lawsuits, Anderson says "there is not one specific thing — no particular threat, no health issue, and no big personal issue" behind his decision to wind up his company. He just wants to find "some comfort in himself." Whatever the reason, says Chris, "the market is facing a Hindenburg-sized gap." "The market," Chris explains, "has a structural deficit of skepticism. Even after regulatory reform, investment-bank research suffers potential conflicts of interest — hence all those disclaimers." And so, profit-minded short businesses like Anderson's filled a need in the financial ecosystem. "Each short business is a cog in the governance machine. Every time one calls it a day, the machine is more prone to malfunction."
New from Bloomberg: Get the California Edition newsletter – Bloomberg journalists across the Golden State report on one of the world's biggest economies and its global influence. "The bling bloodbath is so last season. Cie Financiere Richemont SA on Thursday reported a 10% increase in sales excluding currency movements in the three months ended Dec. 31, far outpacing the less than 1% that analysts had expected. The Swiss company has kicked off the luxury reporting season in style. Its performance — and a strong showing from cashmere king Brunello Cucinelli SpA — should go some way in reassuring investors that the worst is over for Big Luxury." — Andrea Felsted in "Not All of Luxury Can Glitter Like Cartier."  "Laopu Gold Co. has become a market darling and the [luxury] industry's envy, showing how high-end fashion can thrive even in an economic downturn. ... How did Laopu, which has only 30 stores in the mainland, manage to buck the industry trend? Its products are not cheap: A signature butterfly necklace costs around $1,500. … With the proliferation of lab-grown diamonds in China... Chinese are starting to think this stone is not forever, but forever worthless. This is where Laopu found an opening. It's the first to promote so-called 'heritage gold,' using traditional Chinese craftsmanship to inlay small diamonds on pure gold." — Shuli Ren in "Behind This Gold Seller's Improbable 620% Rally." Firefighting lessons from Down Under. — David Fickling How to blame foreigners in German. — Chris Bryant Will Europe find utopia with robots? — Lionel Laurent Indonesia's bond market route to Japanification. — Daniel Moss India needs to reboot growth, but not China-style. — Andy Mukherjee The have and have-not banks. — Paul J. Davies Walk of the Town: Of Boats and Beef | I was just in New York checking up on my apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side. I took a walk along Riverside Park, down by the Hudson River, when it sunk in that the 79th Street Boat Basin — where a friend once lived on a houseboat — had been shut since November 2021. I'd been back and forth in the interim, but I always took my river walks north toward the George Washington Bridge and not south toward the area overshadowed by the apartments once heralded as "Trump City" by the real estate kingpin about to become US president once again [1] . So a deep sense of nostalgia gripped me as I looked at the empty moorings, their accompanying white electric-power modules standing like reject Star Wars stormtroopers.  Unmoored: the abandoned white dock house in the Upper West Side. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg The ramshackle and far from charming floating dock house is to be replaced by a geometrical structure a la Buckminster Fuller. But I'm showing my age. Fuller — who flourished in the mid-20th century — was before my time! He died in 1983, the year I started work at Time magazine. The boats will eventually return in 2027 if all the renovation goes right and local community boards don't put up a fuss over the design of the new dock house. Until then, the area will be a construction site and forlorn.  A farewell to the meat market Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Meanwhile, a similar renewal is taking place in my London neighborhood. Smithfield Market — which has served as a wholesale meat supplier since medieval times — is being transformed into a museum and food hall. It will become the new home for the superb collections of the old Museum of London, which used to be about a five-minute walk away but now stands empty as it awaits a likely demolition (see "Walk of the Town" in this edition of the newsletter). The institution has rebranded with a rearrangement of words and will be known as the London Museum when it reopens sometime in 2026. That will be a welcome development. But I will miss walking through Smithfield's great and gaudy central passage in the early morning and late night as butchers carted carcasses into trucks and freezers. That connection to the ancient life and purpose of cities will be discontinued. I walk to jog my memory. Could jumping around help?  "Leaping lizards? You're so last millennium." Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send upscale-y suggestions and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and find us on Bluesky, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads. | 
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