China blocks Meta-Manus takeover: AI remains a state affair
Behind the veto, geopolitical tensions, technological control and the desire not to surrender strategic assets to the United States.
In the end, given the international context, the premises and the consequences, there were very few who believed that everything would go smoothly. China has stopped the operation Meta-Manus. The $2 billion acquisition with which Zuckerberg aimed to incorporate the artificial intelligence start-up was blocked by the National Development and Reform Commission. 'Foreign investment prohibited'. One line of communiqué, but behind it is an entire textbook of industrial geopolitics. To understand why it was a written ending, one has to look at the more cumbersome precedent, TikTok, which became the subject of trade between the US and China.
Beijing's decision comes ahead of next month's scheduled summit between US President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, during which the focus seems to be on finding an agreement to ease long-standing trade tensions.
Along with the international context is also the nature of the startup. Manus was founded in China, but last year moved its headquarters and core team to Singapore following a funding round led by a US venture capital firm. It was subsequently acquired by Meta. This 'tendency' of Chinese start-ups to internationalise by moving their headquarters outside the Red Continent does not seem to please the Chinese Communist Party. So much so that, since the interest in Meta became apparent, several Chinese regulatory authorities have been scrutinising the transaction, including the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Chinese antitrust authority.
And finally, upstream, there is the role of artificial intelligence in China's strategy. The point is that AI, for Beijing, is not a startup to be evaluated by a revenue multiple. It is strategic infrastructure. It is energy, defence, control. Xi Jinping's government has made it a national priority, with the stated goal of dominating the sector within the next decade. In this context, letting a Chinese-born asset end up inside an American big tech is tantamount to ceding a piece of sovereignty. It is no coincidence that the operation had already been labelled 'conspiratorial'. A term that, in Chinese political parlance, signals a red line.
Manus' move to Singapore, with the relocation of its headquarters and team, was a classic attempt to make the operation more digestible: a kind of corporate make-up. But for the Chinese authorities, the nationality of a company is not measured by its legal address. What counts is where the technology originated, who developed it, what ecosystem nurtured it. And, in this case, the roots remain clearly Chinese.
