If you polled Americans on whether they would be willing to give sensitive personal and financial information to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), you had probably receive a nearly unanimous response of “no”!
SimilarWeb’s research revealed that more than 100 million Americans are using Temu, which is exactly what they have done.
Temu, a China- based e- banking firm, has witnessed rapid progress since its founding in 2022. It has its places set on$ 60 billion in sales this year, after an impressive showing in 2023 as the next- fastest- growing website behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Temu is renowned for its heavily discounted goods ( made less expensive by using relaxed Chinese labor, manufacturing, and distribution laws ), but it’s not that slave labor could ever be “relaxed.”
Its operations are at a remarkable loss, despite spending millions of dollars on social media ads and thousands more on advertisements, including its startling, State propaganda-laden” Shop Like a Billionaire” Super Bowl ads. By one estimate, Temu is losing$ 30 per attempt in an effort to reach the American consumer business.
You might be able to roll this as another dangerous long-term start-up approach if the organization was made up of marketing geniuses with extensive experience scaling up e-commerce giants. However, a recent study revealed that former senior CCP officials, including those in charge of their people and legal affairs, people relations, and operations, are past high-ranking officials. Maybe this is just one of many motives why they’re targeting America therefore strongly with this game and not providing the platform in China.
Like America’s technology giant, Temu is full steam away in its bid to move fast and break things. However, it’s breaking more than just company fealty to Amazon, and the price could be the loss of sensitive American data’s dignity and security.
Cybersecurity Threat
China has a strong reputation for its challenges to the security of important British assets. China has used the sensitive information of Americans to support its standard espionage efforts, in addition to operating the most advanced home surveillance apparatus in the world and being very skilled in poring over large amounts of data that enable aggressive action to destroy personal agency and freedom. China is accumulating the precise type of personal data through Temu that it would need to wreak havoc at a moment’s see, even if we cannot discover the full effects right now, in the coming election time or the further escalation of political turmoil.
Earlier this year, Sen. Tom Cotton, R- Ark., articulated how Temu fits into this mix, asserting that it is” a threat to American suppliers, buyers, website stores, and every one American’s individual privacy”. He emphasized that TikTok almost certainly poses a greater threat to our nation than TikTok.
As revealed by one study, once downloaded, Temu can access almost anything on your phone — the camera, internet, audio recordings, etc. That implies that the CCP could theoretically install spyware and applications on a person’s smart phone to use for complete monitoring of all user activity on the device. This would give China a direct look at the login credentials for other social media, email, and bank accounts.
Temu, in other words, is an e-commerce platform that can be compared to a malware program. No wonder Temu’s CCP- veteran executives are willing to lose$ 30 an order. Furthermore, Temu’s parent company, PDD, was removed from Google Play on the grounds that the fraudulent app had harmful malware that captured highly sensitive personal information, including biometrics, geolocation, and more. And once its cyberattack strategies are exposed as being both more virulent and secretive, it is common practice for China to modify them.
There is growing rumors that Temu and its parent company are compensating for the aforementioned profit losses by selling stolen data from American customers to nefarious actors like data brokers, despite the lack of confirmation.
If Temu serves as a direct vector for the CCP’s espionage of sensitive American personal information is n’t enough reason enough to act, then so should it before addressing the Chinese company’s unapologetic human rights violations, use of slave labor, counterfeiting of Amazon storefront goods, and intellectual property theft.
Time to Act
Temu has been largely ignored in the national discussion about the threats that TikTok poses to American security and data privacy. Now is the time to act, however, with the signing of the TikTok divestiture law, more unvarnished rhetoric coming out of Washington regarding the threats China poses to the country’s posterity, and growing bipartisan efforts to focus on China.
States can take their own actions if there is still need for federal action on this matter. State Representative Jared Patterson introduced HB 2206 last year in Texas that would outlaw the use of social media created or provided by hostile foreign entities. In the 2025 legislative session, Texas is expected to take the lead in this area, with the hope that other states and Congress will follow.
The question remains: Are the low prices worth the high risks as Temu continues its aggressive entry into the American market? With concerns over data privacy, security, and the company’s ties to the CCP, it is clear Temu is not just another e- commerce platform. It acts as a Trojan horse, stealing sensitive American data while still selling cheap goods. The time has come for consumers to pause before downloading from Temu, and for lawmakers to take decisive action to safeguard our national security and privacy.
At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, David Dunmoyer is the campaign director for Better Tech for Tomorrow. He previously worked for the Republican leadership in D.C. and has developed conservative technology policy solutions for the Texas Legislature.
