Trump visits China, and the Texas prosecutor shows off his muscles again with another round of posturing.

Trump is about to visit China, and the ban on Chinese tech companies has been somewhat relaxed, but this is more tactical; the overall direction has not changed. A typical example is Texas, where five lawsuits against Chinese companies were filed within four days. Attorney General Ken Paxton is on a rampage; last December, he targeted TCL and Hisense. Who did he ambush this time? The first is TP-Link, a household name for routers, but many don't know the company's name: in China, it's called TP-Link, and the overseas entity is TP-Link Systems, which was spun off in 2024 in anticipation of various difficulties the US would create for Chinese-owned companies, preemptively de-Sinicizing itself. But they can always find a reason to go after you—claiming firmware vulnerabilities. Even though most routers have firmware vulnerabilities, Chinese brands are different; they can provide backdoor access to products for the Chinese government. Last month, Texas banned government departments from using its products, and this month, it formally sued, on the grounds that its components are imported from China. The second is Anzu Robotics, an American company accused of white-labeling DJI drones. I checked: Anzu signed a technology licensing agreement with DJI to obtain technical specifications for some DJI products, which is a legal, standard, and common cooperation model. But the US government does not accept this because DJI is on the blacklist, and the technology could be used for surveillance and data collection. The third is Lorix, also an American company, which makes home monitoring systems and is accused of using cameras made by Zhejiang Dahua Technology. Dahua acquired Lorix in 2018 and sold it in 2022 before the FCC ban was issued, but the components it provided are still in the cameras. Dahua has been identified by the US Department of Defense as a Chinese military company operating in the US and is on the blacklist, so it is also a national security risk. The fourth is Pinduoduo's overseas platform Temu, accused of deceptive marketing and illegal data collection. Texas sued, saying it claims to offer users affordable and high-quality products but turns users into the product—bypassing security protocols to establish backdoors and stealing private data stored on Chinese servers. In fact, all tech companies use user data to improve experiences. For compliance, Pinduoduo's parent company PDD Holdings has also signed up in Ireland, but no matter how it explains, the US basically doesn't listen. The fifth is the US entity of fast-fashion platform Shein, accused of selling toxic products and leaking sensitive personal data. Not only in the US, but in third-party spot checks in many countries, some Shein products do indeed exceed toxic chemical limits. Considering its low-price strategy and selling nearly 1 million orders per day, quality varies. But to say it steals data for the Chinese government—we really don't care much about what size clothes Americans wear. The final outcome for these five is likely to pay money to settle, especially the larger ones—the bigger the company, the more afraid of damaging goodwill, and the more inclined to settle out of court and pay huge fines. Paxton is particularly experienced in suing companies and has forced tech giants to pay up under the guise of protecting consumer privacy and data security: in 2022, Meta paid 1.4 billion, and in 2025, Google will pay about the same 1.4 billion. Temu and Shein will likely follow the same pattern. These lawsuits are quite controversial even in the US: some think it's serving the people, others think it's extortion, and the division basically corresponds to the two forces of populism and the establishment. Texas itself is a battleground for these two forces. This year's Senate election is between the populist Paxton, the establishment Cornyn, and another congressman Hunt, with the primary in March. The day Paxton filed the lawsuit, the first day of the Chinese New Year, happened to be the start of early voting—showing toughness on China is also a campaign strategy. Elections rely on endorsements: Paxton has the endorsement of the conservative group TPUSA, which is 'kingmaker' Charlie Kirk's organization; Cornyn has the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce, the traditional establishment. Currently, in all polls, the gap between the two is small, but Paxton leads in all, indicating to some extent that the US political direction in the coming years will not change dramatically. The lesson for our companies going global is: everyone is playing with open cards, and trying to avoid risks by splitting entities will only become increasingly difficult.