China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus • Hacker News Board

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#141

Post by bit-anarchist » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #119

Levitz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is holding the US as blameless or perfect, but it gets exhausting to see Chinese propaganda every single time anything like this happens. When the US does something reprehensible, people rarely come up in droves going on and about China's enablement of the North Korean regime or the many abuses enacted on its population, but every single time the US does anything we had to read a whole lot on how…

You have to be joking. The media is almost daily full of China scares. Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder. Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it…

> The media is almost daily full of China scares

That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source?

> there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese.

Ask the Taiwanese about it. Or most countries dealing with border disputes with the PRC.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#142

Post by ericmay » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #135

ericmay wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have export control laws and such, but based on current and past behavior China’s Communist Party doesn’t need those laws to disappear people or create crimes and then make people guilty of said crimes. Worth mentioning though that this is not how America functions, nor our rule of law.

What do you make of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927544

Not much, none of those cases from the US resulted in disappearing the founders. The US is a nation of laws, no matter how imperfect. Stark contrast to the CCP.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#143

Post by mullingitover » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:12 PM UTC

> The Chinese government’s intervention in the transaction drew alarm among tech founders and venture capitalists in the country who were hoping to take advantage of the so-called Singapore-washing model, where companies relocate from China to the city-state to avoid scrutiny from Beijing and Washington.

If the US is going to treat AI technology as a strategic issue upon which it's going to play the national security card, it's not really valid to start the pearl-clutching when China does the same.

Seems like Manus and Meta thought they were going to be clever, and that China wasn't going to play any any of the cards they were holding. Even GPT-2 could've told them that was a dumb idea.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#144

Post by soperj » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:14 PM UTC

EA-3167 wrote: post #81

soperj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes. Feels like Guantanamo Bay all over again.

In what conceivable way?

Indefinite detention without charges. Sounds exactly the same.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#145

Post by hirako2000 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:14 PM UTC

laweijfmvo wrote: post #118

hirako2000 wrote: post #4

Funny that Manus already shows "by meta" along with the logo pretty prominently.

This is interesting. I wonder what inside information China could also be after that Manus might have after integrating with Meta.

Could be, but if that's how it worked out they would have rather let the acquisition be, to gather much more.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#146

Post by dyauspitr » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

wg0 wrote: post #138

Tit for tat. US administration thought they would contain China. Now Deepseek v4 is running on their home grown chips. US companies lost that hardware revenue and dependency instead.

Deepseek v4 is still pretty far behind the frontier models though.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#147

Post by burntbridge » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #83

maxglute wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US absolutely has exit bans on people who break/is being investigated for national security and export control laws, which is what Manus did. Except Americans don't call it hostage taking when they do it.

Please cite an example.

Dan Duggan

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#148

Post by owebmaster » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #103

stego-tech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, no, it's incredibly reprehensible what China's doing. Just like it was reprehensible that America propped up the Iranian shah to ensure western oil interests were served. And reprehensible that the British Empire got the Chinese addicted to Opium to force more favorable trade agreements. Also reprehensible is the Cuban blockade imposed by America, which has prohibited the country from thriving or failing on its o…

You find it reprehensible but can't _just_ say that, you have to justify it with "and also the Americans and British did it". Yeah right.

Why does that bother you tho? Not having the moral ground changes the argument?

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#149

Post by kelnos » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

wxw wrote: post #6

> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore. > It was not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound. > Manus' two co-foun…

The third quote seems to invalidate the second, no? Under the "grounds" that key people are currently physically in China, and as such, the Chinese government can coerce them to do whatever it wants.

Though I suppose if those two did not have majority ownership of the company, the actual (former) majority owners can refuse to unwind the sale regardless of their wishes. Company might be worth quite a bit less to Meta without those key people, though. Either way, I assume the two people stuck in China won't be seeing a dime of that sale price, which is not cool.

(This is regardless of my feelings about Meta owning more AI capability...)

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#150

Post by timothyshen123 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

I really wonder what the employee status gonna be like. It has been quite some time now, I think Meta and Manus are deeply binded lol. As a Manus user, I am liking the product. Sad to see social criticism of them and to see this news.