Chair of extraordinary House committee pushes Shein about information protections, its relationship with China

A model hangs delivery air the Shein warehouse in Whitestown, Indiana, on Nov. 29, 2023.

Scott Olson | Getty Photos

The chair of a extraordinary House committee is drilling down on Shein’s information privateness practices and its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party as the fast-style giant moves nearer to a U.S. initial public offering.

Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington Republican who leads the House’s Committee on Energy and Commerce, despatched a letter to Shein on Wednesday asking about the particular person information it collects and the communications it has had with the Chinese govt. Receive. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Innovation, Records and Commerce, co-signed the letter.

The lawmakers despatched same missives to TikTok, Temu and Alibaba.

“Media experiences repeat that Chinese-owned e-commerce marketplaces are increasingly extra standard in the western world. Here is a excessive menace for e-commerce, client security, and of us’s information privateness and security,” the letter states. “The upward thrust in recognition of apps and marketplaces cherish, TikTok, TaoBao, Pinduoduo, Temu, Alibaba, AliExpress, and Shein, has resulted in tantalizing public scrutiny referring to the industry practices of those corporations.”

In response, a Shein spokesperson urged CNBC it has obtained the committee’s letter “and could perhaps perhaps beget to still be providing a response.”

Shein has obtained a giant preference of letters from contributors of Congress and local lawmakers across the nation about the usage of forced labor in its supply chain, and it is a ways already going by intention of intense scrutiny from public officers who are alive to the retailer is skirting U.S. approved pointers. Nonetheless, Wednesday’s letter from McMorris Rodgers and Bilirakis differs in every its focal level and its chunk.

While the letter touched on Shein’s utilize of forced labor, it focused basically on information privateness. Opposite to a pair of the opposite elected officers and committees scrutinizing Shein, the Energy and Commerce committee has extra heft in its mandate to contend with points related to client protections and international commerce.

The letter asks Shein what information security practices it requires from its third-party vendors and provider companies and whether or no longer it collects biometric, genetic and other health information from customers. The lawmakers furthermore asked whether or no longer the corporate collects information on patrons’ non secular and political affairs.

The letter puzzled whether or no longer Shein agrees that genocide is happening in China’s Xinjiang tell, basically in opposition to the Uyghur ethnic neighborhood, and if it would “unequivocally tell” that its supply chain is freed from forced labor.

Earlier this year, when asked whether or no longer it stores U.S. information in China, Shein urged CNBC that information is kept within Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud products and companies “in information facilities and areas positioned within the United States.”

Nonetheless, lawmakers are still alive to that information on U.S. patrons can find yourself in the fingers of the Chinese govt. While Shein insists that it is a world company that was once basically based in China, the bulk of its supply chain is basically based mostly in the tell, and it may per chance perhaps perhaps perhaps furthermore be field to Chinese law.

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