The past week saw two notable technology-related developments in China intersecting with geopolitics — as is often the case. The first was linked to Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp and Instagram, and its purchase of a Chinese-origin AI agent company, named Manus. The Chinese government has now called it a “conspiratorial” attempt “to hollow out the country’s technology base,” the Financial Times reported this week.The comments can be read as part of the race between the United States and China for the development of artificial intelligence.Then came a race with a clear winner — a bipedal robot. Built by the smartphone company Honor, it participated in a half-marathon (21 km) in Beijing, covering the distance in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. In doing so, it comfortably passed the world record 57 minutes and 20 seconds, set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo last month. A robot at the race in Beijing. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)More broadly, it was yet another sign of China’s strong position in robotics, seen in incidents ranging from a robot show earlier this year to the incident involving a Chinese dog robot at the AI Summit in New Delhi.Finally, we turn to politics, specifically, China’s tense relations with Taiwan, the island that it claims. Last week, the leader of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s opposition party, visited Beijing and met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the invitation of the Communist Party. This was the first such meeting in a decade, with signals for the larger dispute.Here is a closer look at these developments:1. Manus, US and ChinaAn FT story this week detailed China’s probe of the $2 billion Meta-Manus deal announced in December 2025. The Chinese assessment of the significance of the deal came from China’s National Security Commission, a body led by Xi Jinping. China’s antitrust watchdog is also among the bodies now examining the deal, the FT reported.Manus debuted in early 2025, not too long after the AI company DeepSeek demonstrated China’s ability to build competent AI models for cheap, compared to their US counterparts. On its website, Manus’s goal is described as building “general AI agents as the Action Engine for life.” Unlike AI chatbots, agents are seen as performing multi-step tasks of greater complexity. Manus can scour through websites in real time and create files based on user prompts.Story continues below this adExplained | What the China-Pakistan peace plan for West Asia says about China’s stakes and global tradeManus later shifted base to Singapore, as many Chinese tech companies have in the past, for ease of operations. The FT story stated that it also shut down its China operations, which is somewhat unusual. “In March, co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned by the NDRC, the country’s top economic planner, to discuss issues including potential violations of China’s foreign investment rules. Both have since been barred from leaving China as the review continues,” it reported.UPSHOT: Meta, like most other technological giants of today, has placed its bets on AI, and the Manus acquisition has been seen in that respect. Meta said it aimed to integrate advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products.But the latest action from China flows from the larger geopolitical rivalry with the US, where tech is a crucial sector that could affect everything from defence capabilities to economic growth. Over the last few months, China has also initiated investigations on grounds such as market dominance and security to examine US companies like Google (which does not even run its search engine in China) and Nvidia.2. China in the robotics raceThe results of the race in Beijing are being linked to China’s advances in robotics. An opinion article in the Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times stated, “A humanoid robot running a marathon is, in essence, a comprehensive test of various technologies. Behind every upgrade lies an iterative technological breakthrough.”Story continues below this adChina has witnessed many such breakthroughs in recent years. In January, billionaire businessman Elon Musk called China a key competitor in the humanoid robots market.UPSHOT: In the past, some of China’s robotics-related events have been termed “gimmicky”, with critics questioning whether they involved genuine technological advancement or actual industrial use.Of late, however, the developments in the kind of robots demonstrated by Chinese companies year after year have been acknowledged as noteworthy. Counterpoint Research found that in 2025, an additional 16,000 units of humanoid robots were installed worldwide, with China alone accounting for more than 80% of them. These were primarily driven by increasing adoption in data collection and research, warehousing and logistics, and manufacturing.While there are gaps in the technology still, with robots struggling with dexterity-related tasks that are generally instinctive for humans, their increasing adoption matters. China’s focus on manufacturing and its labour shortages has contributed to the growth of robotics, along with state funding, but a scalable technology could lead to wider adoption elsewhere, too.Story continues below this ad3. Kuomintang-Communist Party connectionThe meeting between Xi Jinping and Kuomintang (KMT) party chairwoman Cheng Li-wun was described by the latter in glowing terms. She said in a recent interview that as one family, China and Taiwan should remain confident in peace and must not be incited by external forces, in a clear reference to the United States.Cheng also had words for Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which she accused of “dragging all 23 million of us” in Taiwan into a “dead end, a road to death” in challenging the Chinese government.UPSHOT: The meeting came at a time when the DPP is facing some challenges at home, at the helm of a minority government, and when China has grown more assertive in its territorial claims on Taiwan.There are also signals to the US in this visit, framed as an internal matter to be sorted out among parties in the region. What is also interesting is the history between the Communists and the Kuomintang, who fought a civil war in the early 20th century for the political control of modern China. We detailed the history and the latest meeting here.