If you’re like me, you constantly see ads for Temu products. They promise things that are stylish, clever, useful, cute, or whatever it is you’re looking for, and they’re all so very cheap. But while you’re buying their product, it turns out that this Chinese company may well be harvesting your information and laundering it to the CCP. Now, though, at least in Texas, Temu can’t do that anymore.
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Temu was unknown a few years ago, so it’s worth looking at its history to understand how it suddenly became so ubiquitous. It all started in 2015, when Colin Huang, a Chinese- and American-educated tech guy who also worked at Google, founded Pinduoduo, an e-commerce business he later rebranded as PDD Holdings. It is now one of China’s largest online shopping businesses.
While PDD is a publicly traded company, and Huang (no longer in leadership but still holding significant equity) is not a member of the Chinese government, that doesn’t mean PDD has no government ties. PDD has significant ties to the CCP because several former CCP officials are (or have been) among PDD’s top executives. Moreover, like all China-based companies, it must comply with CCP intelligence agencies when directed under the National Intelligence Law.
In September 2022, PDD launched Temu, a global version of the Chinese company. Its purpose is to connect consumers directly with inexpensive, usually Chinese-made merchandise. It grew at a near-exponential rate thanks to low prices, a huge advertising budget, cute games that drove bargains, cheap international shipping via a loophole Trump finally closed, and piggybacking on PDD’s supply chains.
Naturally, a lot of these cheap Chinese goods are alleged to have been made by Uyghur slave labor. I’d like to think that when I buy a product through an American retailer because it’s impossible to get an American-made version anymore, the retailer is at least taking steps to prevent it from being made with Uyghur concentration camp labor…but honestly, who knows nowadays?
Aside from the morality of buying from Temu, there’s another problem with the outlet. Like all online retailers, it inevitably gets your name, credit card information, email address, snail-mail address, and, possibly, your phone number. Many merchants promise not to sell that information, although I cynically wonder how many keep that promise.
However, in the case of Temu, selling the information may be the least of a buyer’s problems. The worry is that the CCP is harvesting that information for who-knows-what nefarious ends.
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (now facing off against James Talarico) was concerned enough about this possibility that he filed a lawsuit against Temu. The lawsuit just settled. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Temu (which has denied all wrongdoing) must:
- Store Texans’ personal information on American-owned and controlled servers in the United States, restricting access from China except for essential business functions.
- Submit its applications to independent security testing.
- Strengthen product safety testing and remove dangerous merchandise.
- Pay $3 million, with additional penalties possible for violations.
Thankfully for those outside Texas, other states are also going after Temu for privacy violations. Currently, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Missouri, in what’s proving to be a primarily Republican-led effort, have also sued Temu for violating consumer privacy.
Internet shopping is here to stay, but you’d better be darn careful about the companies from which you buy your goods. As for me, I’d avoid Chinese-based online retail companies. After all, as that protester said way back in 2019, when Hong Kong residents made a last-ditch effort to preserve their liberties from Chinese encroachment, “Don’t trust China. China is a**hole.”
Image created using AI.
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