By Supantha Mukherjee and Foo Yun Chee
STOCKHOLM/BRUXELLES (Reuters) – TikTok, Shein, Xiaomi ( OTC: ) and three other Chinese companies were named in a privacy complaint filed on Thursday by Austrian advocacy group Noyb that alleges the companies illegally sent user data from the European Union to China .
Noyb is known for filing lawsuits against US companies such as Apple (NASDAQ: ), Alphabet (NASDAQ: ) and Meta (NASDAQ: ), leading to several investigations and multi-billion dollar fines.
Vienna-based Noyb (None Of Your Business) said this was their first complaint against Chinese companies.
Noyb has filed six complaints in four European countries over the suspension of data transfers to China and is seeking fines that could reach up to 4% of the company’s global revenue.
Noyb said Alibaba (NYSE:) e-commerce site AliExpress, retailer Shein, TikTok and phone maker Xiaomi admit to sending Europeans’ personal data to China, while retailer Temu and Tencent’s messaging app WeChat transfer data to undisclosed “third countries,” possibly China.
According to the privacy regime of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data transfers outside the EU are only permitted if the country of destination does not compromise data protection.
“Given that China is an authoritarian surveillance state, it is crystal clear that China does not offer the same level of data protection as the EU,” said Kleanthi Sardeli, a data protection lawyer at Noybo. “The transfer of personal data of Europeans is clearly illegal – and must be stopped immediately.
Chinese companies, notably TikTok owned by ByteDance, face regulators in various countries. TikTok plans to shut down its app to US users starting Sunday, when a federal ban on the social media app is set to take effect.
The European Commission is also investigating TikTok over suspicions that it did not limit election interference, particularly in Romania’s presidential election in November.
