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Discussion (113 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
> 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-founders, CEO Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao, were summoned to Beijing for talks with regulators in March and later barred from leaving the country, five sources familiar with the matter said.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.
I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune.
Pure speculation on my part, but i wouldn't be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders.
Feels like Guantanamo Bay all over again.
I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.
If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way of pushback, so China must feel very confident in its position to use such tactics.
For instance US Steel acquisition by Nippon Steel(japanese) is one such example. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2vz83pg9eo
More examples,
Ant Group(chinese) tried to buy MoneyGram (blocked in 2018) https://www.reuters.com/article/business/us-blocks-moneygram...
Xiamen Sanan Optoelectronics tried buying Lumileds, blocked again by US. Also Chinese ofc.
Broadcom and Qualcomm deal was also blocked, Broadcom was then Singapore based in process of moving to US I believe... (very sus happened in 2018 too, someone didn't pay Donald enough)
https://thediplomat.com/2014/02/india-inc-and-the-cfius-nati... Indian company forced to divest from US tech firm... (2013)
I am certain there must be European examples as well but smaller ofc, AI companies are over valued these days, most acquisitions were never this big in the olden days of pre 2020s...
I know for a fact that most folks don't want to invest in US for this reason other than in public equities or bonds ofc. Private foreign investment in US has been high only due to European pensions and Middle-eastern money going into it.
I don't know about how fair, far, or right it was compared to these were, detaining founders is also not confirmed, but sure let's assume it's true still...
Only difference in US is perhaps foreign folks can sue over it. Sometimes, if they are lucky and if the deal is worth it.
I find it strange people of HN being based in US can be so ill informed of what their country, does to foreign companies but be mad about things foreign companies do to them?
I mean sure rest(96%) of the world doesn't really exist, it's but a myth or a land the better folks of US only want to take value when needed?
Unsure what this comment meant, this has happened before as well btw, these are just post 2010s examples because they are relevant. Russians and US used to do this too, India and US were worse of pre-2000s, Japan and US were at their throats in 1980s, in terms of trade and acquisition...
Or just order another country to snatch you up.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou
She was arrested, and was being extradited from Canada into the United States... Because her Chinese company was doing business with Iran.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout
This chap was arrested in Thailand, extradited, and did a decade in a US prison because he had the audacity of selling weapons from Russia to Colombia. I'm not sure how exactly US law is of any relevance to such transactions...
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[1] Or, since 2025, just shoot a missile at your boat, with an option for a follow-up salvo if there any survivors. Strangely enough, everyone who has managed to survive both the initial attack, and the double-tap has so far been repatriated to their countries of origin, with no charges filed by the US.
For China, there are so many examples of people doing 180s and being full of contrition after those interventions, it's hard to imagine anything but severe intimidation or worse happening behind closed doors.
But you cannot seriously hold America up as blameless when we've wielded our economy as a cudgel against anyone we remotely disagree with (sanctions against Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc; tariffs against everybody), have military bases scattered around the world to invade anyone at a moment's notice, regularly park our navy off foreign shores to coerce desired outcomes, and dronestrike civilians as a final saber-rattling before full-fledged conflict.
The details change, but the fundamental playbook - using state violence to coerce outcomes favorable to said state - is far from new. Hell, take a look beyond the past thirty years of history and there's a glut of incidents where empires used this sort of leverage to achieve outcomes - including the United States! We've traded political prisoners to achieve negotiated outcomes repeatedly, we just use different words to make ourselves feel better about it. We've propped up entire puppet states to ensure American corporate interests were served instead!
Like, holy shit, why do I have to teach you naysayers what's already outlined in history books just because you can't be bothered to do the assigned reading?
PRC still haven't gone the step up to ban PRC strategic talent from working in US like US has for PRC semi. Don't be surprised in 5-10 years US has to hire PRC workers with obfuscated identities like PRC dealing with US/TW talent in PRC EUV. Plenty more room how these things can escalate depending on how serious PRC starts to treat dual use AI.
So you said today, as you often say that you live in Singapore. Of what nation are you a citizen?
Shou Chew:
Singapore.
Cotton:
Are you a citizen of any other nation?
Chew:
No, Senator.
Cotton:
Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship?
Chew:
Senator? I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not.
Cotton:
Do you have a Singaporean passport?
Chew:
Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore.
Cotton:
Do you have any other passports from any other nations?
Chew:
No, Senator.
Cotton:
Your wife is an American citizen. Your children are American citizens?
Chew:
That's correct.
Cotton:
Have you ever applied for American citizenship?
Chew:
No, not yet.
Cotton:
Okay. Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?
Chew:
Senator? I'm Singaporean, no.
Cotton:
Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party?
Chew:
No. Senator, again, I'm Singaporean.
seems to have gone over your head... i edited out the crack about your iq, which was done only because you chose to engage that way to begin with. i would respect an apology for misreading me more than trying to sanitize your earlier arrogance, but c'est la vie.
Interesting. I wonder what sorts of threats China could make to back up this demand, or if this is more of a warning for future acquisitions in the space.
Not to mention how they are openly expansionist in the SCS and obviously wrt Taiwan.
Of course they want to be seen as reasonable, their ideal is to control the international narrative just how they can do it internally in China.
It's a disgusting playbook, but it's also an effective one if you're a state trying to exert control over important players or entities.
I was working at Google at the time. Before Llama, releasing weights was not even worth a discussion.
You did have to apply for access, but if you met their criteria (basically if you were the right profile of researcher or in government), you got direct access to the model weights, not just an API for a hosted model. So access was restricted, but the full weights were shared.
I believe that the model was leaked by multiple people, some of which didn't work at Meta but had been granted access to the weights.
Sure they can object to it or claim they are "blocking" the sale, but is there really anything they can do considering that Manus is no longer within their jurisdiction?
Generally speaking this seems bad for Chinese companies, though. They were able to raise capital from the West by running out of "Singapore"; I think basically every investor will have significant pause investing in Chinese-national-owned startups after this, "Singapore-based" or not.
Nationals. The word you are looking for is nationals.
Anyone who has ever thought otherwise was just naive. This is anything but news. If you’ve had an impression that China capital market is free and western-like, you were right - it was an impression. Always has been.
They kept him under house arrest for years and now he complies
The question is are they still controlled by the PRC. China doesn't allow dual citizenship (like other Asian countries), so people might legitimately want to work abroad while keeping their native passport.
That is the leverage that China has.
https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shanghai/?p[offices...
https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/hongkong/?p[offices...
I also assume, like most advertising platforms, they cater heavily to the China export market.
From your link it looks like they might do R&D for Oculus in China (but may not even be able to sell it there due to the data-collection tie in required).
Not sure what you mean by catering to the export market. b2b sales would be just as restricted as sales to consumers.
They're not. A significant part of ad spend by the likes of Temu, AliExpress, Shein and other Chinese exporters are on Meta's platforms: e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/31/metas-continued-rally-could-...
China isn't as stupid as the EU, which just says thanks and would you perhaps like to blow up another pipeline?
Hormuz will stay closed by the pirates. LNG terminals are already built in Alaska to supply the Asian "allies", whose economy the US also ruins.
If the EU had any backbone, it would cut off the US from ASML.
Yes, this is about the rest of the world.
ASML depends on a lot of US technologies.