On April 8, the Washington Times published an article titled "Congress Should Scrutinize Temu from China More Closely." The article called the international version of Temu "a major threat to U.S. data security", threatened that "the U.S. Congress should pay closer attention to the Chinese app Temu", and even said that Temu should be subject to strict scrutiny by the U.S. Congress like TikTok.
Screenshot of the Washington Times report
According to the article, the U.S. Congress has been focused on banning TikTok, but a more worrying data security threat has been overlooked. If lawmakers really want to protect Americans' data from the Chinese government, the real target should be Temu — less well-known than TikTok but far more threatening.
Temu has been downloaded more than 123 million times in the U.S. and has more than 50 million monthly active users, but China's National Intelligence Law means that China "does not need to obtain permission from companies to obtain data on Temu from U.S. users," claiming that "the data security of U.S. consumers is being threatened."
The article also lists several so-called "evidences" to support this view. First, the article claimed that Temu's parent company, Pinduoduo, was a Chinese company and that nearly all of its employees lived in China, and therefore slandered it as "controlled by the Chinese government."
Second, the article cites a case brought by U.S. users against Temu in February this year, saying that the plaintiffs claimed at the time that the Temu app had access to "almost everything" on their phones and "purposefully and intentionally" loaded malware and spyware into their apps to deceive customers about how to use their data.
Third, the article also mentions Pinduoduo's financial situation and the Chinese government's heavy subsidies, saying that Pinduoduo received more than US$400 million (about 2.8 billion yuan) in 2023, arguing that such subsidies have increased "the possibility that Pinduoduo will provide data to the Chinese government."
The article stresses that considering Temu's rapid growth in the United States and Temu's readiness to further increase its investment in the United States, it considers these data breaches very dangerous and urges "the U.S. Congress to immediately conduct further investigations."
In fact, as early as 2019, then-Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang responded to this fallacy by saying that China's National Intelligence Law not only stipulates the obligation of organizations and citizens to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work in accordance with the law, but also stipulates the obligation that national intelligence work should be carried out in accordance with the law, respect and protect human rights, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of individuals and organizations.
Finally, the article said that the U.S. justice department should send Temu a written document that, although not effective for the time being, would bring "a foreign company that collects a lot of data on Americans" to the attention of Americans. At the same time, the article also called on Congress to take enforcement action to investigate Temu to determine what foreign entities are behind Temu.
The article stresses that Temu is clearly a major data security threat and should be "heavily censored" like TikTok. "It's long overdue for Congress to start asking questions to let Americans know that they are paying a much higher price than what is listed on the Temu app. ”
It is worth noting that the author of this article, Cash Patel, served as deputy director of National Intelligence during the Trump administration and is considered a "loyal ally of Trump" by the outside world. In addition, he was Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense and National Security Adviser to the House of Representatives Standing Select Committee on Intelligence.
Cash Patel
In addition, according to public information, the Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Moon Sun Myung, the leader of the South Korean cult "The Unification Church," as a right-wing conservative newspaper. At the same time, the newspaper was also the earliest propaganda standard-bearer of the "China threat theory", and spread a large number of rumors against China during the epidemic.
On January 29, 2020, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) published an article titled "Wuhan Pneumonia: Five Fake News That Spread Around the World with the Epidemic", listing "The virus is a biological weapon" as one of the five major fake news. Most of the reports cited two articles from the Washington Times, which cited only a former Israeli intelligence officer and provided no other relevant evidence.