But I believe most of the anxiety around having Chinese apps on our phones is overblown and politicized.

There are real concerns about these apps’ privacy protocols. For example, the Special Competitive Studies Project, a new think tank founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, specifically named Shein, Temu, and CapCut (as well as WeChat) as apps that “could pose similar challenges” as TikTok in a February 15 post. Although public awareness of their links to the Chinese government might not be as strong, some people are trying to change that. The same treatment could easily spread to other Chinese apps. The premise of these bans is that the Chinese government could use TikTok to manipulate what federal workers see or to acquire sensitive information like their GPS locations. This week, it was joined by the European Commission and the Canadian government, both of which decided to ban TikTok on staffers’ work phones. The US has been trying to limit the app’s reach at the state and federal level since December.

The unprecedented popularity of Chinese apps is a bit jarring juxtaposed against another story currently dominating the news cycle: expanding bans of TikTok use on government devices. But it’s also because they are spending generously on marketing: Temu is estimated to have spent some $14 million on its two Super Bowl ads (in which it also promised a $10 million giveaway). Their success is partly because Chinese tech companies, having survived a decade of cutthroat competition in the domestic consumer tech industry, can now be even better than Silicon Valley at making easy-to-use and addictive apps.

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