China's antitrust watchdog. SAMR has widened its jurisdiction in recent years and is shaping up to be one of the country's best-equipped regulators. Chinese firms fear its new willingness to crack down on local monopolies, as it did with Alibaba in 2021.
SAMR's antitrust investigations frequently serve a dual purpose: trade-war leverage and a mechanism for supply-chain security. Angela Zhang, the author of "Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism", says they can "kill two birds with one stone."
When trade fighting broke out during Donald Trump's first term, SAMR used a probe into Qualcomm's planned acquisition of NXP, a Dutch chipmaker, to gain leverage. The deal was called off. When Mr Trump hit China with tariffs in early 2025, SAMR unveiled a probe into Google. It later launched an investigation into DuPont's Chinese unit, which was suspended ahead of trade talks. The Google actions were reportedly halted as the countries negotiated over TikTok's American business.
SAMR has separately probed Qualcomm over an unreported acquisition, and continued a probe into Nvidia over alleged anti-monopoly violations in its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox, an Israeli supplier of computer networks.
SAMR's probe into Google may target the dominance of Android, which runs on around 70% of Chinese smartphones. China's technocrats view dependence on American software as a weakness and want to promote a home-grown operating system developed by Huawei. The Nvidia probe similarly reflects wariness about dependence on America's most sophisticated AI chips. Chinese tech firms have been told to stop using Nvidia's AI chips.
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.