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America’s most popular free app, TikTok, has made headlines in recent days not for its content but for its alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok Chief Executive Zhou Shouzi testified before the U.S. Congress, answering hostile questions about Chinese parent company ByteDance and how much access the Chinese government has to the app’s data.
But TikTok is not the only Chinese mobile app conquering markets in Western countries.
Analyst firm Apptopia estimates that three of the top 10 free mobile apps in the U.S. are also owned by Chinese companies. Two of them were also the most downloaded apps in the UK.
What are these applications? What makes them so successful?
CapCut
Video editing app CapCut, often referred to as a companion editor for TikTok content creators, was downloaded 13 million times in February alone, according to data analytics firm Sensor Tower.
This video editing tool is optimized for mobile editing and offers a host of features designed to make your videos go viral, like adding popular songs, filters, and special effects.
CapCut is also owned by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
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CapCut is owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
SHEIN
According to Forbes, SHEIN is a global fashion brand founded in 2012 and currently valued at nearly $15 billion.
The company was founded by Chinese billionaire Chris Xu and is based in Singapore.
A quick search of the #Shein hashtag on TikTok and Instagram turns up hundreds of popular influencers bragging about their recent SHEIN purchases. It leverages social media to deliver hundreds of new products daily to Gen Z users at low-cost prices.
Ago
The shopping app has been out in the U.S. for less than a year, but it’s quickly outpacing Amazon and Walmart.
The online supermarket sells everything from clothing to electronics, allowing shoppers to bypass big discount stores and buy directly from Chinese manufacturers.
The price is so low that many Americans searched “Is Temu legit” after the company placed an ad during this year’s Super Bowl.
The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, but it is a subsidiary of Pinduoduo Holdings. Pinduoduo is a Chinese online retail giant that focuses on direct-to-consumer products.
Experts say that the success of Chinese apps in the United States is partly due to fierce competition in the domestic market, while American apps are banned in China.
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Temu is a subsidiary of Pinduoduo Holdings.
Apps that do well in China, such as messaging app WeChat, are driven by recommendation algorithms that are tailored to meet the needs of users in China or elsewhere.
“China’s tech companies have gone through a period of such intense competition at home that in some ways they are as good as, if not better than, U.S. apps,” says MIT Review, who specializes in Chinese technology Said Zeyi Yang, a reporter and researcher at .
TikTok is the first Chinese app to achieve significant global success, but U.S. lawmakers and national security experts have warned that the Chinese-owned app could be vulnerable to data privacy breaches and censorship by the Chinese Communist Party.
Paul Scherer, author of “Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” said: “How do the United States and other democracies respond to Chinese threats such as TikTok? The app’s challenges outside of China have profound implications for freedom of expression and freedom of information around the world.”
U.S.-based tech companies such as Apple have waged lengthy court battles to stop the government from seeking their users’ data, but Sharel said no such avenues exist in China.
“Ultimately, if the Chinese Communist Party tells (a Chinese company) that they have to do something, they don’t have a choice,” he said.
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TikTok CEO Zhou was funded to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.
Zhou Shouzi of TikTok explained that there is a “firewall” to protect Americans. He tried to reassure lawmakers about safety concerns.
A statement from TikTok to the BBC said foreign governments cannot access US user data. The BBC has also contacted other apps for comment.
Until U.S. lawmakers pass sweeping data privacy laws, any app could be affected by a data breach, regardless of their country of origin, Sharrell said.
“There is a danger of a knee-jerk reaction that anything Chinese is bad,” he said.
“I think people should be skeptical of all apps. People are giving up huge amounts of data on their phones without fully understanding what they’re consenting to, what information companies are extracting, or how they’re using it.”