Chinese Communist Party Tech Takes Over Super Bowl Parties
The Temu takeover is far more concerning than the TSwift takeover ever could be
This year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched event in American television history (for what it’s worth, the top ten are all Super Bowls), giving companies massive bang for their buck–which is saying a lot, considering that a 30 second ad cost around $7 million.
While much of the leadup to the game (and countless prop bets) focused on how much air time Taylor Swift would get, the more troubling interlocutor on our TVs was Temu, not TSwift. The Chinese company is starting to dominate America’s shipping headspace–and our Super Bowl ad space, running as many as six ads over the course of the night, when many were singing Swift’s Blank Space. While this was the first Temu rodeo for many Americans, Temu’s troubles are no joke.
In the runup to the game, CBS faced criticisms, almost exclusively from Republicans, over plans to air the ads. Attorneys General from Montana, Iowa, Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, and South Carolina, along with China hawks like West Virginia’s Representative Carol Miller, warned against airing the ads. “CBS must take Temu ads off the air immediately,” Miller stressed. All was sadly to no avail–as the ads ran almost on repeat while Americans watched the ever-overrated Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid win another Super Bowl on the strength of their team’s kicker, Harrison Butker.
To briefly deviate from the problems of Temu, and to discuss the game itself, I’d note a great point from noted NFL expert Rob Lockwood:
Bill Belichick is the greatest coach in NFL history. This includes going 10-6 with Matt Cassel... who had not started a game [as quarterback] since high school.
Andy Reid is the second greatest coach in the modern NFL era. Has HALF the rings BB has.
An actual[ly] interesting stat is how Reid's downfall in PHI mirrors BB in New England.
Though Reid went 4-12 playing with VICK! Bill was... playing Bailey Zappe at end while coaching a very good Defense.
Miller, for her part, told me after the game that “it is appalling that CBS and Paramount allowed Temu to air ads that are blatantly against American ideals.” The West Virginia Republican added that “any propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party should be banned from the United States. How can we allow ads filled with products made with slave labor to be advertised in the United States? [The] commercials were unacceptable and I will continue to call for their removal from American [airwaves].”
Bonnie Glick, who served as the number two at the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Trump administration, knows a thing or two about Temu, telling me that “Temu is a subsidiary of Pinduoduo, Chinese Communist Party-backed e-commerce giant. Temu recently inserted itself into the fast fashion industry focused on dumping cheap, low-quality products into the US at a loss to crowd out other retailers. It is highly likely that Temu uses products sourced from Xinjiang in China where it relies on slave labor performed by Uyghur Muslims. The Trump Administration determined that China is engaged in a campaign of genocide against the Uyghurs. Temu is an arm of that genocidal operation. The fact that they were allowed to advertise during the Super Bowl demonstrates a way in which the CCP continues to con the American people.”
The company is Communist China’s version of Amazon–except that “Temu’s business model essentially allows the company to avoid responsibility in complying with a U.S. law that block[s] imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless businesses can prove the items were made without forced labor.” As with TikTok, which is trying to supplant YouTube and Instagram in terms of short form video content, there are also massive data privacy concerns with Temu.
Caleb Max, the founder of an anti-CCP nonprofit, the Athenai Institute, told me that Temu’s Super Bowl spending spree is “part of China’s continued soft power internet takeover which threatens every American consumer. Additionally, Temu has repeatedly failed to uphold the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act meaning that many of the goods purchased from the site are made with slave labor.”
In fact, the company is currently being sued, with plaintiffs claiming that the “app is purposefully and intentionally loaded with tools to execute virulent and dangerous malware and spyware activities on user devices.” I’ll note here that the article I’m citing is from CBS News, and that CBS ran Temu’s ads during the Super Bowl.
As with TikTok, again, Temu denies the allegations–but it’s worth noting that, by Chinese law, there is no such thing as a private company in China. The country’s “national intelligence” law “requires that all Chinese businesses and citizens operating overseas must, upon demand, gather sensitive information from host countries and provide that to the Chinese government.”
A scathing report from the bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party last year found that Temu’s business model specifically “all but guarantees that shipments from Temu containing products made with forced labor are entering the United States on a regular basis, in violation of the [Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act].”
Fittingly, members of the China Committee were keen to note the problems with these ads. Representative Ashley Hinson urged a total boycott of Temu: “don't download their app & don’t shop there.” Representative Michelle Steel also told Americans to “not fall” for Temu’s tricks. For their part, the House’s Homeland Security Republicans called it “shameful” that “the NFL and CBS gladly accept money from a CCP-affiliated company that profits off of products linked to slave labor.”
During the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift appeared on screen for only 54 seconds, ruining countless drinking games across America. Temu outlasted her. I’ve already made the conservative case for Taylor Swift–but it doesn’t matter if you agree with that or not. Every American should be far more concerned about the CCP infiltration of our airwaves than the Swiftie counterpart.
Wish folks understood the Temu paradigm ... cheap because ... and money to China