The tech industry publication the Information revealed on Tuesday that it had discovered a wide variety of baby and toddler products on the Chinese e-commerce applications Temu and Shein that pose a danger to their intended users, including padded crib bumpers that the U.S. government has banned from sale.
Temu and Shein are both China-based consumer applications. Shein specializes in “fast fashion” items marketed to young women, though it also sells clothing for men and children. Temu sells clothing as well as household goods, art supplies, health-related products, and more. Both sell products widely considered to be very low quality at cheap prices.
The companies are massive international operations that rake in billions of dollars for their Chinese owners, particularly in the United States. Shein reached record-high profits of $2 billion in 2023, up from $700 million in 2022, lagging only behind Amazon and Walmart in online fast fashion sales in America. Temu’s parent company, Pinduoduo, which operates a parallel cheap goods retailer in China, saw a 246-percent increase in net profits in the first quarter of 2024; 60 percent of Temu’s transactions in 2023 were in America.
The success of both companies is largely based on being able to dramatically undercut the prices of their competitors and ship their products directly to American consumers from their Chinese suppliers, cutting shipping middlemen. Their trade practices have fallen under intense criticism in the United States, as evidence suggests they both have ties to China’s sprawling Uyghur slave trade, the backbone of the ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people in occupied East Turkistan. Shein has also been accused of stealing copyrighted designs to rapidly manufacture clothing items, while Temu is facing legal action in Arkansas for essentially running a customer “data-theft business.”
The Information added to concerns about Americans using Temu and Shein on Tuesday, as its reporters found items for sale on the apps intended for children that could present a significant danger. A top concern for the outlet was the availability of padded crib bumpers, which are intended to soften the sides of a crib for babies. Congress passed the Safe Sleep for Babies Act in 2021, banning crib bumpers as a result of significant evidence that they pose a threat of suffocating babies if they fall on their faces during sleep.
On Shein, the Information found drawstring hoodies for sale in sizes for very small children. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission explains on its website that “drawstrings at the hood and neck area of children’s upper outerwear in sizes 2T to 12 (or the equivalent) are prohibited” because they could become entangled in a child’s neck and asphyxiate them.
“The Commission has determined that hood and neck drawstrings on children’s upper outerwear in sizes 2T to 12 or the equivalent present a strangulation hazard that is a substantial product hazard,” the commission explains. “In addition, the Commission has determined that waist and bottom drawstrings on children’s upper outerwear not meeting certain requirements also present a substantial product hazard.”
The report also found some products that Temu identified as “baby products” but were labeled for use with pets despite their design appearing overtly for babies and reviews for the products discussing their use with babies.
According to the Information, Temu and Shein removed listings for the products identified as dangerous after being approached for comment. Temu reportedly told the outlet it is “strengthening the monitoring of all baby sleeping products and their associated safety requirements,” without elaborating. Shein responded by assuring it would take “swift and necessary actions” when presented with dangerous products.
This report was far from the only one identifying dangerous products on the Chinese apps. In May, consumer safety authorities in South Korea announced that they had tested Shein fashion items and found high amounts of toxic substances.
“Unlike officially imported products, overseas direct purchase products enter the country without separate safety inspections, creating a de facto safety blind spot,” a Seoul city official said at the time. “We cannot stand idly by while citizens’ health is at risk, so we have been announcing the results of our inspections conducted with professional institutions every week.”
The tests reportedly found 428 times the amount of phthalates, a potentially toxic chemical, in shoes sold on Shein.
The Seoul city government again announced in August that it found toxins in women’s products that Temu and Shein — as well as another Chinese e-commerce outlet, AliExpress — sell.
“In the most recent inspection, 144 products from Shein, AliExpress and Temu were tested, and multiple products from all companies failed to meet legal standards,” the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Wednesday. In addition to phthalates, the testing discovered unacceptable levels of formaldehyde and lead in products sold on those websites, including clothing, shoes, and nail polish.
“Phthalate-based plasticisers affect reproductive functions such as sperm count reduction, and can cause infertility and even premature birth,” a Seoul official told AFP.
The safety concerns facing Temu and Shein are in addition to concerns expressed by American officials that the companies profit off of slavery, intellectual property theft, and the exploitation of a trade loophole known as de minimis, in which international import packages worth less than $800 do not have to pay certain import duties and are not screened for potential ties to slave labor. The loophole particularly protects Shein and Temu packages, often worth as little as $11, from scrutiny under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which bans imports from East Turkistan unless the importer can prove slave labor has not tainted the product.
The Chinese government facilitates slavery in East Turkistan — which the Communist Party colonized and renamed the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (XUAR) — through its genocide of the indigenous Uyghur people. Human rights experts have compiled extensive evidence that the government allows websites to sell Uyghur people as slaves in batches of 50 to 100 people to factories nationwide, where they are forced into brutal labor conditions.
In June 2023, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned that it found that Americans shopping with Shein and Temu are at an “extremely high risk” of buying slavery-tainted products.