When the Labor Party¡¯s Jerome Laxale won the Sydney seat of Bennelong from the Liberals at the 2022 election, votes from Chinese Australians angry about then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison¡¯s spat with Beijing were instrumental in his victory.

Now Laxale and other politicians are using social media including Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle app also called RedNote, and other campaign strategies to appeal to Chinese communities who will again be a crucial bloc in the upcoming election.

¡°If you want to communicate with your electorate, you need to go where your electorate are and some of them are on Xiaohongshu,¡± said Laxale, who has handed out 30,000 red envelopes with QR codes to his personal accounts on Xiaohongshu and another Chinese app, WeChat.