It was a completely Chinese company until last year. Then it split in 2. The US headquartered half has 11,000 employees in mainland China and 500 in the US based on what I could find when I googled it. It’s solely owned by the founder of the original company and his wife who are Chinese citizens.
I don’t know whether it’s worth banning them or not, but putting your hands up and saying “what Chinese company?” is just absurd.
1. The company was founded Zhao Jianjun and Zhao Jiaxing who are brothers, I don't know where you got the husband/wife sole ownership from.
2. As you admitted, they have completely separated into 2 separate companies, claiming that it is still Chinese is akin to saying "tea is Chinese", that's completely absurd, yes, it was at some point in history, that point is not now.
1. I got the idea from the Tp-Link website. Zhao Jianjun is known in the US as Jeffery Chao. Him and his wife are the sole owners of the US company.
“in October 2024, established TP-Link Systems Inc., based in Irvine, CA, as its global headquarters and parent company with Jeffrey (Jianjun) Chao and his wife Hillary as sole owners. Jeffrey is CEO of the company.”
2. The sole owners are Chinese citizens, 95% of their employees are Chinese citizens living in China, most of the R&D happens in china, and the majority of the components of their products are manufactured in China.
They have an HQ building in the US, but 90% of it is leased to other companies.
This is a US based company in name only. It’s essentially a shell company designed to bypass a potential US ban.
The reality is the only part that matters, the chipsets, are produced in Chinese factories owned by TPLink.
They moved everything that doesn’t matter to the US recently in an effort to give the illusion that they aren’t putting chips manufactured under the control of the Chinese government into the majority of routers used in the US.
I’m not agreeing with banning them, but I can certainly see how it creates significant risks that I would want to mitigate somehow.
I agree with you that they shouldn't be banned, but the US casting aspersions against another country is pretty rich considering the involvement of the CIA, and NSA around the world.
It's hard to believe you're saying 2 in good faith. Companies don't change that fast, and you skipped the part where so many of the employees are still in China.
Three years would be an impressive timescale to move a company from one country to another.
Except they didn't do that. They moved the HQ.
I'll accept for the purpose of this argument that they fully split the company into two separate companies. But both of those companies are still mostly Chinese, going by the numbers in this thread.
> Did you not read the article? It's hard to take your comment in good faith if you didn't.
This is a weak attempt at turnabout. The article doesn't present any evidence of separation or non-Chinese-ness, it just quotes the company (and even that quote admits a bunch of Chinese assets). But even if it did, it wouldn't be bad faith to skip reading it.
> This is a weak attempt at turnabout. The article doesn't present any evidence of separation or non-Chinese-ness, it just quotes the company (and even that quote admits a bunch of Chinese assets). But even if it did, it wouldn't be bad faith to skip reading it.
1. Who else would document a company's restructure if not the company itself?
2. Yes, not reading an article and commenting on it is bad faith.
> going by the numbers in this thread.
3. So you have no evidence of it not being as the company says, just the vibes of others on this thread, okay Senator.
> 1. Who else would document a company's restructure if not the company itself?
If the company wants to give numbers, I'll listen to them. But the company made vague/unproven claims and that's not enough. Journalists can investigate.
> 2. Yes, not reading an article and commenting on it is bad faith.
Commenting on something talked about in the article doesn't require reading that specific article. You can use other sources.
> 3. So you have no evidence of it not being as the company says, just the vibes of others on this thread, okay Senator.
Other people brought objective numbers. Not vibes.
Why should I not use those numbers? You have not claimed any of those numbers are wrong, you're just calling people's conclusions wrong.
> TP-Link's Headquarters are in California, they have a branch in Singapore and they manufacture in Vietnam
"TP-Link is a Chinese company that manufactures network equipment and smart home products. The company was established in 1996 in Shenzhen. TP-Link's main headquarters is located in Nanshan, Shenzhen; there is a smaller headquarters in Irvine, California"
Just because a company changed its headquarters to US all of a sudden they are a US company? Even if 99.9% of its decision, operation and R&D are still in elsewhere?
That is like people saying Nothing is a UK company, when all I see is a Chinese company registered in UK.
