How popular are Chinese apps in the US?

Besides TikTok with 150 million monthly users, many Chinese apps such as CapCut, Temu or Lemon8 also reach millions of downloads.

In recent years, TikTok has emerged as a popular app among young people around the world, including in the US. However, ByteDance's video platform has also become the focus of US lawmakers and intelligence officials over concerns that it could be used to spy on American users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress in March, while some states are considering banning the app.

However, other Chinese apps are also gaining popularity in the country, not just TikTok. According to Insider Intelligence , the shopping app Temu, owned by PDD Holdings, ranked second in the US App Store as of the end of May, surpassing American names such as Kohl's, Wayfair, Nordstrom.

Meanwhile, TikTok and CapCut, both developed by ByteDance, ranked fourth and fifth on the US App Store charts. Shein, a Chinese fast -fashion brand, ranked fourteenth. Lemon8, a platform similar to Pinterest and Instagram and also owned by ByteDance, reached nearly a million downloads in just one week in late March and early April, shortly after Mr. Chew testified. The app now has 1.8 million monthly users in the US.

Downloads of Chinese apps are also surging in the US. Since its launch, TikTok has had 415 million downloads, CapCut has 99 million, and Temu has 67 million, according to Apptopia. Shein even surpassed TikTok with 855 million downloads, despite having fewer monthly active users at 22 million.

The proliferation of Chinese apps in the US comes as the US government moves to block TikTok, saying the platform could transfer US users' data to China, posing a national security risk. "An app with a thousand or a million US users does not pose the same security risk as an app with tens of millions of users," said Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Security (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund.

As the US targets TikTok, it also needs to come up with a common framework for how it assesses the risk of a Chinese app with a large user base, Gorman said, taking into account the type of app, its ability to spread and disseminate information, and other details.

Based on that criteria, names like CapCut pose the lowest risk, since the app’s primary purpose is to edit videos. For e-commerce platforms like Temu or Shein, the risk of spreading misinformation may not be as high as on social media services.

But the US still has reason to be concerned. According to a recent CNN report, Temu’s sister platform Pinduoduo, a popular shopping app in China, contains malware. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission later cited the report when assessing Temu’s data risks. Meanwhile, Shein has also been accused by Shut Down Shein, a group that describes itself as a coalition of US individuals, brands and human rights organizations, of illegally collecting user data, though it has not provided evidence.

"I understand that Americans enjoy the convenience of Chinese e-commerce and innovative tools, but people need to take into account the fact that those companies ultimately have to comply with Chinese demands," said US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner.

In March, Warner and Republican Senator John Thune drafted a bill called the Restraint on Information and Communications Technology Security Threats (RESTRICT) Act, which would “comprehensively address the threat posed by foreign adversary technologies, such as TikTok,” Warner’s office said in a statement on March 6.

Andy Yen, CEO of email and VPN company Proton, believes that platforms like TikTok need to be restricted in the United States. However, the RESTRICT provisions are too broad to be implemented without consequences. Yen argues that the solution to creating a competitive digital marketplace in the United States is not to allow Chinese companies to operate freely, but to level the playing field, allowing companies from the United States, Europe, or elsewhere to compete fairly in the United States.

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