{"id":77169,"date":"2026-04-27T19:44:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/27\/china-blocks-meta-takeover-manus-ai-agent-developer"},"modified":"2026-04-27T23:35:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:35:32","slug":"china-blocks-2bn-meta-takeover-of-ai-agent-developer-manus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77169","title":{"rendered":"China blocks $2bn Meta takeover of AI agent developer Manus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beijing says domestic tech companies must seek explicit government approval for accepting US investment<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/live\/2026\/apr\/27\/oil-prices-high-us-iran-peace-talks-stock-markets-house-prices-latest-news-updates\">Business live \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>China has blocked Meta\u2019s $2bn (\u00a31.5bn) acquisition of an AI startup as it cracks down on US investments in domestic tech companies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2025\/jul\/30\/zuckerberg-superintelligence-meta-ai\">Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Meta<\/a>, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced the acquisition of Manus, a developer of autonomous AI agents, in December.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/27\/china-blocks-meta-takeover-manus-ai-agent-developer\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beijing says domestic tech companies must seek explicit government approval for accepting US investmentBusiness live \u2013 latest updatesChina has blocked Meta\u2019s $2bn (\u00a31.5bn) acquisition of an AI startup as it cracks down on US investments in domestic tec&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2675,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3492,41,6,50,556,800,3539,58,560,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-artificial-intelligence","category-asia-pacific","category-business","category-china","category-chinese-economy","category-computing","category-mergers-acquisitions-and-funding","category-technology","category-technology-sector","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2675"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77174,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77169\/revisions\/77174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}