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TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is pictured on the day he will testify before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing entitled “TikTok: How Congress can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms,” as lawmakers scrutinize the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 23, 2023. 

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

For several years now, ByteDance’s TikTok has been the focus of lawmakers and intelligence officials who fear it could be used to spy on Americans. Those concerns took center stage during a five-hour grilling of TikTok’s CEO back in March.

But while TikTok has been the one in the spotlight, other Chinese apps that present similar issues are also experiencing massive popularity in the U.S.

Concerns about ByteDance stem in large part from a national security law that gives the Chinese government power to access broad swaths of business information if it claims to be for a national security purpose. U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers fear that the Chinese government could effectively access any information that China-based app companies have collected from American users, from email addresses to user interests to driver’s licenses.

But that doesn’t seem to have swayed many consumers, as several China-based apps are still booming in the U.S.

For example, the shopping app Temu, owned by China-based PDD Holdings, has the number two spot on the Apple App Store among free apps as of late May. It also held the number 12 spot among digital retailers in the 2022 holiday season for unique visitors to its site, topping stores like Kohl’s, Wayfair and Nordstrom, according to Insider Intelligence, which also credits visibility on TikTok for its rise.

Meanwhile, ByteDance-owned apps CapCut and TikTok hold the fourth and fifth spots on the App Store rankings. Chinese fast fashion brand Shein holds fourteenth.

And between late March and early April, after the TikTok CEO hearing before Congress, ByteDance’s Lemon8, saw nearly 1 million downloads in the U.S., Insider Intelligence reported based on data from Apptopia. It’s an app with similarities to Pinterest and Meta’s Instagram.

These apps share some of the features that have worried the U.S. government about TikTok, including about whether some of these firms adequately protect U.S. user data when operating out of China (TikTok has stressed that U.S. user information is only stored on servers outside of China). Like TikTok, these apps collect user information, can analyze trends in their interests and use algorithms to target consumers with products or information that is likely to keep them engaged with the service.

But experts on China and social media say there are important differences between these apps and TikTok which might explain the relative lack of attention on them. Among the most important of those features is the scale of their presence in the U.S.

TikTok vs. other Chinese apps

In just 17 days after launch, Temu surpassed Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Shein on the Apple App Store in the U.S., according to Apptopia data shared with CNBC.

Stefani Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Even as they grow, the U.S. userbase of many popular Chinese apps is still dwarfed by TikTok’s massive U.S. audience of 150 million monthly active users.

TikTok sister app Lemon8, for instance, has an estimated 1.8 million monthly active users in the U.S., according to Apptopia.

While TikTok has had 415 million downloads in the U.S. since its launch here, CapCut has had 99 million, Temu 67 million and Lemon8 1.2 million, according to Apptopia.

Only Shein surpasses TikTok in downloads among this group of apps, though it launched far earlier in the U.S. in 2014. Shein’s app has 855 million downloads in the U.S. since its debut, though Apptopia estimates it has about 22 million monthly active users.

“An app with a thousand, or even a million users in the U.S. does not present the same widespread cybersecurity threat that an app with 100 million users has,” said Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow for emerging technologies at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Gorman said as the U.S. considers the threat posed by TikTok, it will also need to develop a framework for how to evaluate the relative risk of Chinese apps. The scale should be one factor, she said, and the type of app, including its ability to spread propaganda, should be another.

“The ability for a Chinese technology platform to represent critical information infrastructure in a democracy has to be part of that calculus when assessing risk,” Gorman said. “That’s where I think the analogies with power grids or energy infrastructure are applicable. We we would not allow the authoritarian regime to build significant components of our energy infrastructure and rely on an authoritarian regime for that.”

That means that an app like ByteDance’s CapCut may present a lower risk, both because of its smaller user base and because it’s meant to edit videos, rather than distribute them.

“We’re really at the beginning stages of even recognizing that a broader characterization and categorization is actually needed,” Gorman said, adding that rather than playing whack-a-mole with Chinese technology that poses a threat to U.S. national security, the country should develop a more systematic framework.

But in the meantime, U.S. consumers continue to turn to Chinese apps.

“Among the most downloaded apps consistently are Chinese-based ones like Temu and CapCut,” said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst covering social media at Insider Intelligence. “And then of course, there’s the early growth of Lemon8, which suggests that the appetite for Chinese apps in the U.S. is still growing.”

For e-commerce apps, the risk of spreading harmful misinformation may not be as high as on a social media service. An e-commerce platform like Temu or Shein is likely a less viable platform to spread propaganda than a video app like TikTok.

“People just aren’t really spending the same amount of time on commerce apps and they’re not exposed necessarily to the same kind of content that could potentially have a negative impact on young people,” Enberg said. “I also don’t necessarily think that the connection to China for some of these apps is as clear to the average consumer and I also don’t think that consumers are really going around thinking about where the apps that they’re using originate from.”

Still, the U.S. could find a reason for concern. A recent CNN report that found Temu sister company Pinduoduo, a shopping app popular in China, contained malware. The parent company of both apps, PDD Holdings, did not respond to a request for comment. Research staff at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission pointed to that report in assessing Temu’s data risks, though an analyst recently told CNBC that Temu has not been as “aggressive” in requesting access to consumers’ data as Pinduoduo.

At least one group has viewed the pressure on TikTok as an optimal time to raise concerns with another Chinese company popular in the U.S.: Shein. The group Shut Down Shein, which is a “coalition of individuals, American brands and human rights organizations,” according to executive director Chapin Fay, launched the day that TikTok’s CEO was hauled before Congress.

Customers hold shopping bags outside the Shein Tokyo showroom in Tokyo on Nov. 13, 2022. Reuters reports the fast fashion retailer is targeting a U.S. IPO in the second half of 2023.

Noriko Hayashi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

“We were sort of agnostic on the timing, but we wanted to make sure that while people are talking about TikTok, there’s this other nefarious actor, Shein, who’s also collecting data and doing it all under the radar and also doing these other even worse things like slave labor,” said Fay, managing director of Actum consulting firm.

The group specifically takes issue with Shein’s alleged use of forced labor, as Bloomberg reported last year that tests revealed that cotton in clothes shipped to the U.S. were linked to a region in China where the U.S. government has said forced labor is deployed. China has denied the use of forced labor.

Shut Down Shein also rails against the company’s alleged use of an import loophole to avoid tariffs. Through the de minimis trade tax exemption, the group says, individual customers become the importer of their fast fashion goods, a practice that came up at a recent hearing by the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.

A Shein spokesperson said in a statement that it “complies with the domestic tax legislations of the countries in which it operates.” The spokesperson also said that Shein has “zero tolerance for forced labor,” takes seriously visibility across its supply chain and requires suppliers to follow a “strict code of conduct.”

Fay said it’s important to recognize that the way Shein has been able to grow its brand and gain new customers, in large part via so-called influencer hauls, is through TikTok.

Fear of a ‘slippery slope’ ban

Faced with national security worries over TikTok, lawmakers have considered several proposals that could lead to a ban. But critics fear some proposed solutions could create a slippery slope of unintended consequences. And some say the most effective long-term solution for curbing the use of Chinese apps may be fostering an environment for robust alternatives to grow.

Perhaps the most prominent of the bills that could lead to TikTok’s ban in the U.S., the RESTRICT Act, would give the Commerce Secretary the power to recommend barring technology that comes from a select group of foreign adversary countries if they determine the risks cannot be sufficiently mitigated otherwise.

Though the proposal quickly garnered serious attention for its heavy-hitting group of sponsors, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., and Commerce subcommittee on communications ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., it’s since appeared to lose the early momentum. That’s due in part to concerns raised by the tech industry and others that the bill could give the executive branch broad power to seek a ban on certain technology.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

“While I understand that Americans enjoy the convenience of Chinese e-commerce and the creative tools of many Chinese communications apps, we have to reckon with the fact that these companies ultimately are beholden to the demands of the Chinese government,” Warner said in a statement. “We’ve had an important and overdue conversation about the predatory and invasive practices of U.S. tech firms in recent years; those same concerns are valid with the growing sway of these foreign apps – and then exacerbated by the manner in which these PRC-based companies serve as instruments of PRC power.”

One of those critics of the bill’s current scope is Andy Yen, CEO of Proton, which makes an encrypted email service and VPN. While Yen believes that TikTok should be banned in the U.S., he fears the RESTRICT Act is currently too broad to effectively do so without additional consequences.

In a recent blog post, Yen argued that the bill would give the Commerce Secretary overly-broad power to designate additional governments as foreign adversaries and feared that ambiguous language in the bill could be used to penalize individuals who use VPNs to access apps that are banned in the U.S.

In the post, Yen suggested these issues could be resolved with changes to the bill’s language to make it more targeted and limited in scope.

Speaking on the “Pivot” podcast recently, Warner stressed the need for a rules-based approach that could be legally upheld to deal with tech from foreign adversaries. He said he believes criticism of the bill, including that it would target individual VPN users or that U.S. companies that do business in China could be swept up in enforcement action, is not valid, though he said he is open to amending the bill to make that more clear.

“There is a very legitimate national security concern here,” Yen said. “So I think it is something that regulators do need to tackle and this is why Congress is trying do something. But I think we need to do it in a way that doesn’t undermine the values of freedom and democracy that make America different from China.”

Still, a TikTok ban would have other effects in the U.S., like yielding more market share to existing tech giants in the U.S. like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. Proton has been an active proponent of antitrust reform to create what some companies see as a more level playing field for tech developers in the U.S.

Yen said the solution to creating more competitive digital markets in the U.S. is not to allow risky Chinese companies to run rampant, but rather “to have a level playing field that can allow other American companies or European companies to compete in the U.S. fairly.”

That’s a goal shared by Jonathan Ward, an expert on China who founded the Atlas Organization consulting firm.

“The best way that we can do this is to create alternatives,” Ward said. “Because even if these companies don’t take root in our own market, even if we’re able to successfully deny them access here, as we did with Huawei, they can flourish in other parts of the world,” he added, referring to the Chinese telecom company that’s been placed on a U.S. entity list over national security concerns.

“We’re also going to have to stand up American and free world alternatives to these companies because you can’t let them take over industries that matter or create apps that become integral to the fabric of our societies,” Ward said. “And that’s going to require an effort that goes beyond the Congress and into the sort of entire system of democracies worldwide.”

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China’s BYD pushes into emerging markets amid policy uncertainty in the U.S., Europe

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China's BYD pushes into emerging markets amid policy uncertainty in the U.S., Europe

BYD electric cars waiting to be loaded onto a ship are seen stacked at the international container terminal of Taicang Port in Suzhou, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on February 8, 2024.

STR | AFP | Getty Images

In the race against Tesla for the global electric car market, Chinese automaker BYD is pushing hard overseas despite rising barriers to the U.S. market.

The Shenzhen-based company has already tested the waters in a number of countries with some immediate sales success, often just one year after entering. 

Given policy uncertainty around Chinese EV exports to major markets like the U.S. and Europe, BYD is seeking to bolster overseas sales by moving production to regions perceived as more friendly. Already, the company has factories in Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Hungary and Uzbekistan in the works. 

“They are targeting countries without very strong domestic auto industries, where they are likely to face less political pushback or headwinds from a policy perspective,” said CLSA research analyst Xiao Feng, noting that recent developments in the U.S. underscored the need for such an approach. 

The Biden administration last month said it’s begun investigating whether Chinese-made cars pose national security risks, and raised the possibility of restricting the vehicles. The U.S. has tried to support adoption of electric cars domestically, but sales penetration is well below that of China.

Most China EV makers, including BYD, have 'very limited U.S. volume exposure,' analyst says

BYD is moving quickly, beginning with Thailand, where the company expects its first factory outside China to be in operation by the end of this year. The automaker surpassed Toyota to grab the top spot for passenger car sales in Thailand in January, despite having no sales there just one year prior, according to data from Marklines.

Once operating, the Thailand factory will likely serve the rest of Southeast Asia. EY predicts the electric car market in the region will grow exponentially to at least $80 billion a year in sales in the next decade. 

BYD has established itself in Southeast Asia as the top-selling EV brand, grabbing more than one-third of the market last year after barely selling cars there previously, according to data from Counterpoint Research. 

Edge against Tesla

BYD sold 70,000 electric cars in Southeast Asia last year with a 35% market share, putting it ahead of rivals Vinfast and Tesla, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

One of BYD’s advantages over Tesla is a number of offerings in the mass market, as well as a mix of hybrid and battery-powered cars. Tesla exclusively makes more premium-priced, battery-only cars. Having hybrid options is beneficial for emerging markets where battery-charging infrastructure remains limited.

Southeast Asia will likely remain BYD’s strongest overseas market in the short term as the company pursues its goal of doubling its car exports from last year to 500,000 in 2024, according to Canalys automotive analyst Alvin Liu.

“The Southeast Asian EVs market is still in its early stages, and consumer habits need to be cultivated,” said Liu. “Cost-effectiveness” is particularly important, he added, with BYD’s Atto 3 and Dolphin models sold in the region at very competitive prices.

Why China is beating the U.S. in electric vehicles

The company is also investing $1.3 billion to build an electric car factory in Indonesia in 2024, local media reported in January. This year, BYD also reportedly plans to significantly increase the number of its stores in Singapore and the Philippines. 

The company did not respond to a request for comment about the reported plans. 

While BYD does not break out capital expenditure by country, it disclosed 81.52 billion yuan ($11.33 billion) in autos-related capex in the first six months of 2023, nearly double the 45.94 billion yuan reported for all of 2022.

In another contrast with Tesla’s direct-dealership model, BYD often relies on local distributors and partners for sales in countries outside China. For example, in late 2022, BYD signed a distribution agreement with Sime Darby Motors in Malaysia. 

Plan for the Americas 

While U.S. scrutiny on China’s electric vehicle dominance is only growing, BYD is expanding in Brazil and has its sights on Mexico, on the U.S. border.

The company’s Americas CEO Stella Li told Reuters BYD is considering plans for a factory in Mexico, where it has started selling more electric cars.

If BYD does build a factory in the country, that could make it a “beachhead for the Americas,” Bill Russo, founder and CEO of investment advisory firm Automobility, recently told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

“Mexico is part of the USMCA so there is an opportunity to export perhaps from Mexico to North America,” he said, referring to the free trade agreement that the United States, Mexico and Canada enacted in 2020. 

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BYD does not plan to sell passenger cars to the U.S., Li reportedly said at the end of February.

The automaker did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

China remains by far BYD’s largest market. Out of more than 3 million new energy passenger vehicles the company produced last year, just over 242,000 went overseas.

The rapid growth of BYD and other Chinese electric car companies has other automakers worried.

In February, the Alliance for American Manufacturing released a report warning that low-cost Chinese imports could be an “extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector” and called on Washington to prematurely block imports from Mexico.

That was just weeks after company releases confirmed that BYD was well ahead of Tesla in terms of vehicle production.

Europe and other markets

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Nvidia and Johnson & Johnson to develop new AI applications for surgery

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Nvidia and Johnson & Johnson to develop new AI applications for surgery

The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Johnson & Johnson.

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Johnson & Johnson on Monday announced it is working with Nvidia to develop and scale new artificial intelligence applications for surgery. 

J&J’s MedTech unit and Nvidia plan to integrate AI within devices and platforms from pre-op to post-op to help ensure that surgeons have access to all the information they need, Nvidia’s vice president of health care Kimberly Powell said. For instance, the companies are using AI to analyze surgical video and automate the time-consuming documentation required after a procedure. 

“There’s an ability to use all the sources of data inside an operating room, whether it’s your voice, or whether it’s the video coming from a camera inside the body, or elsewhere, to take advantage of the generative AI moment that we’re in,” Powell told CNBC in an interview. 

The MedTech unit at J&J creates tools and solutions for conditions such as heart failure, kidney disease and stroke, and its technology is used in more than 75 million procedures each year, the company told CNBC. Powell said Nvidia has worked in medical devices and imaging for more than a decade. 

Shan Jegatheeswaran, vice president and global head of digital at J&J MedTech, said just one minute of surgical video is equivalent to roughly 25 CT scans, so having the compute power and infrastructure to annotate and share those videos widely will be powerful for surgeons.

In the short term, he said de-identifying and enhancing the video can help educate and train surgeons. In the long term, analytics can be layered on top of video to provide real-time decision support. More accessible surgical video means residents will not have to solely depend on the insight and availability of the more experienced physicians at their institutions. 

“Think about athletes. They look at game tape, and they get better over time as they look at themselves,” Jegatheeswaran told CNBC in an interview. “That’s sort of the starting point. That’s the holy grail in the short term.”

Powell said the collaboration is in the “early innings,” and many applications will take time to fine-tune and implement safely. However, she said nondiagnostic use cases such as automating paperwork will help save surgeons time and make a difference “right out of the gate.”

“I think all of us as patients should get really excited about the fact that this kind of technology is going to be able to enter in and be within reach of all the clinicians and all the hardworking nurses and all the health-care staff,” Powell said. “They’re going to have the very best tools and information at their disposal.”

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UnitedHealth Group has paid more than $2 billion to providers following cyberattack

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UnitedHealth Group has paid more than  billion to providers following cyberattack

UnitedHealth Group Inc. headquarters stands in Minnetonka, Minnesota, U.S.

Mike Bradley | Bloomberg | Getty Images

UnitedHealth Group said Monday that it’s paid out more than $2 billion to help health-care providers who have been affected by the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare.

“We continue to make significant progress in restoring the services impacted by this cyberattack,” UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty said in a press release. “We know this has been an enormous challenge for health care providers and we encourage any in need to contact us.”

UnitedHealth disclosed nearly a month ago that a cyber threat actor breached part Change Healthcare’s information technology network. The fallout has wreaked havoc across the U.S. health-care system. Change Healthcare offers e-prescription software and tools for payment management, so the interruptions left many providers temporarily unable to fill medications or get reimbursed for their services by insurers.

UnitedHealth said on Monday that it began releasing medical claims preparation software, which will be available to thousands of customers in the next several days. The company called it “an important step in the resumption of services.”

On Friday, UnitedHealth said it restored Change Healthcare’s electronic payments platform, after rebooting 99% of its pharmacy network services earlier this month. It also introduced a temporary funding assistance program to help health-care providers experiencing cash flow trouble because of the attack.

UnitedHealth said the advances will not need to be repaid until claims flows return to normal. Federal agencies like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have introduced additional options to ensure that states and other stakeholders can make interim payments to providers, according to a release.

A survey published by the American Hospital Association on Friday found that 94% of hospitals have experienced financial disruptions from the Change Healthcare attack. More than 60% of the 1,000 hospitals surveyed said the impact to their revenue has been around $1 million per day. Responses were collected between March 9 and March 12.

“We continue to call on Congress and the Administration to take additional actions now to support providers as they deal with significant fallout from this historic attack,” AHA CEO Rick Pollack said in the release.

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it has launched an investigation into the company due to the “unprecedented magnitude of the cyberattack.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights is carrying out the inquiry. The OCR enforces the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s security, privacy and breach notification rules, which most health plans, providers and clearinghouses are required to follow to protect health information.

UnitedHealth hasn’t disclosed what kind of data was compromised in the attack, or whether it cooperated with the cyber threat actor in order to restore systems. The company said it’s been working closely with law enforcement and third parties like Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud’s Mandiant to assess the breach.

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