China announces decision blocking Manus acquisition deal

China's top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, announced Monday that the office of the foreign investment security review working mechanism has, in accordance with laws and regulations, issued a decision to prohibit foreign investment in the Manus acquisition project and has ordered the parties involved to revoke the acquisition deal.

In late December last year, U.S. tech giant Meta announced acquisition of Chinese-founded AI agent startup Manus with 2 billion U.S. dollars. Chinese regulators have since launched an investigation into the deal for national security reasons.

The AI startup was founded in China before relocating to Singapore. It develops general-purpose AI agents and launched its first such agent in March 2025. This AI is capable of executing complex tasks such as coding, planning, market research and data analysis by interpreting just a few lines of simple natural language instructions.

Li Xi, a senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC), met with a delegation led by Dmitry Krutoi, head of the Administration of the President of Belarus, in Beijing on Monday.

Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said China is ready to work with Belarus to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and continue to firmly support each other on issues regarding each other's core interests and major concerns.

China is willing to enhance the alignment of development strategies and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, strengthen multilateral collaboration and promote the bilateral ties with Belarus, Li said.

Krutoi said Belarus is firmly committed to developing the all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership with China, and stands ready to learn from China's experience in state governance and party building to push the bilateral ties to a higher level.