I think the headline is incorrect , as far as the timeline goes there were TWO separate actions. The first was the Business Court removing the CEO and the Board, the second was the ministrial action to take over Nexperia NL business as part of the wartime measure.
These were all precipitated by the US BIS50+ ruling that threatend to sanction any Chinese subsidiary of any company on the Entity list , which increaed the list from something like 1500 to 30k companies overnight with Nexperia in the mix.
After the recent US-China talks and the suspension of the rule , the Dutch have in kind made movements to backtrack.
However at this point its only the Ministerial action that has been suspended i.e the SECOND action.
The FIRST action by the Business courts still remains in place , so the CEO/Board is still outed.
Well the Chinese are powerful and without the help of the US the Netherlands can't do much. Additionally, the process of moving discrete semiconductor production to China is already underway. Production in Hamburg will stop sometime in late 2029 and the R&D center in Nijmegen, Delft will close done late 2028. The US should have helped the Netherlands but now it is over the Chinese won this battle and fairly easily they did not need to use much of the leverage that they had. The commentary by EU officials shows that they used a top down approach using the EU to pressure the Dutch.
Are you sure this is right, and if so would you mind sharing a source for this?
According to the Nexperia 2024 annual report [1], they had just committed to _invest_ in the Hamburg site for their WBG/SiC/GaN production lines. Closure of the fab in Nijmegen was actually reported by NXP[2] not Nexperia - different companies.
Perhaps something could have been done via the EU. (No, I know, France/Italy/Spain/Germany are way too obsessed with their exports to PRC.)
Been there/done that - Sweden was unjustly bullied by China and got next to no support from EU. That was a mask off moment for some of us. It seems that for member states like Sweden and the Netherlands, we're supposed to just pay a lot of money in order to get toll-free access to the internal market.
Edit: I would welcome a split into EU North and EU South. Sort of like Aldi North and Aldi South.
EU North: UK (welcome back!), Norway (hello!), Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Estonia.
The CPC leadership have plenty of personal assets stashed in the EU/UK. It would be easy enough to take them to the cleaners by prosecuting them for violating Chinese AML laws.
What if I told you that China has more influence over the EU than it has over the Kamer der Staten-Generaal( the Dutch parliament), thus they are using the EU to pressure the dutch. The irony is that European Sovereignty is respected when all the countries of Europe are able to make their own sovereignty respected i.e. it is each of the individual states making their own sovereignty respected that actually elevates the sovereignty of Europe, the EU by pressuring, disregarding and relegating the sovereignty of the member states devalues the collective sovereignty of Europe. Additionally adversaries need only focus on having leverage over EU officials and the EU officials will do their bidding for them.
I must say I feel very vindicated by this. The seizure of control of the company just for appointing a CEO from China (the horror!) never smelled right to me, but everyone in the previous comment section on this tried to rationalize it with "There must be some legitimate national security reason for the Dutch to do this". Clearly not much of a threat for them to cave so quickly!
It was not because he was from China. It was because he was directing funds to a Chinese company which did not make any business sense and leaking all kinds of intellectual property to China.
The Dutch move was dumb due to international power differences. The reasons to intercede were sound.
Don't Chinese FULLY own nexperia though? And I don't think bots would have their name highlighted in green and write on a fringe website compared to reddit or youtube
> It was because he was directing funds to a Chinese company which did not make any business sense and leaking all kinds of intellectual property to China.
Oh no, not the free market! Is this a leopard eating our face?
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords, and let IP be consigned to ash.
The free market should be used to benefit $my_country and should be ignored if it hurts my interests. If the free market is hurting my country, then why play by those rules when I can just use my other resources to get what I want?
> The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions at Nexperia was dropped as “a show of goodwill”
Why wouldn't CCP/Beijing just be emboldened by this? Why do the dutch feel the need to show goodwill towards CCP?
(Edit: I see a lot of turbulence with this comment. I wonder why people seem to think it's invalid. The Chinese government runs these strategic companies very closely. China is not a democracy. It is a de facto dictatorship run by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. Nothing of this really a controversial opinion.)
"show of goodwill" is politician-speak for capitulation. Taking over Nexperia caused a chip shortage for the german auto industry, which was an unintended consequence that they couldnt handle.
a bit tired of auto industry's "just in time" supply managment. they had the same problem when covid closed everything down and now 5 years later they still have not learned that they cant just order "enough for 1-2 months of production" and not more. It's not like the parts change in 2 months.
>Why do the dutch feel the need to show goodwill towards CCP?
They're not showing goodwill, they're desperate. Why did the Netherlands (read the US) think it's in any position to seize a company from China when the entire auto industry is dependent on Chinese chips?
I can't help but laugh at this, as a European even. China unlike our esteemed continent isn't going to have its businesses commandeered around by Washington, we should take a lesson in self-respect from them. It's also not on us to dictate what system of government they run their country on. Thankfully someone isn't putting up with Washington's crap.
Maybe I was being a bit flippant, but I don't buy the "goodwill" argument. It's probably went, and by the article, something like this:
China: Great, two can play this game, how about you now lose access to X,Y,Z that may be manufacturing, fabs, investments, rare earths, Chinese markets, etc.
Netherlands: Hmm, that costs more than this company by an order of magnitude. Take it.
This isn't taking into account back channel dealing, conflicts of interest or really anything besides a surface level reading of situation. They had them by the balls.
I think the headline is incorrect , as far as the timeline goes there were TWO separate actions. The first was the Business Court removing the CEO and the Board, the second was the ministrial action to take over Nexperia NL business as part of the wartime measure.
These were all precipitated by the US BIS50+ ruling that threatend to sanction any Chinese subsidiary of any company on the Entity list , which increaed the list from something like 1500 to 30k companies overnight with Nexperia in the mix.
After the recent US-China talks and the suspension of the rule , the Dutch have in kind made movements to backtrack.
However at this point its only the Ministerial action that has been suspended i.e the SECOND action.
The FIRST action by the Business courts still remains in place , so the CEO/Board is still outed.
Well the Chinese are powerful and without the help of the US the Netherlands can't do much. Additionally, the process of moving discrete semiconductor production to China is already underway. Production in Hamburg will stop sometime in late 2029 and the R&D center in Nijmegen, Delft will close done late 2028. The US should have helped the Netherlands but now it is over the Chinese won this battle and fairly easily they did not need to use much of the leverage that they had. The commentary by EU officials shows that they used a top down approach using the EU to pressure the Dutch.
Are you sure this is right, and if so would you mind sharing a source for this?
According to the Nexperia 2024 annual report [1], they had just committed to _invest_ in the Hamburg site for their WBG/SiC/GaN production lines. Closure of the fab in Nijmegen was actually reported by NXP[2] not Nexperia - different companies.
[1] https://www.nexperia.com/dam/jcr:fc307e7e-e159-482c-b21b-0f9... [2] https://bits-chips.com/article/closure-of-nxps-nijmegen-fab-...
They didn't use the EU, they put pressure on companies in other countries, notably Germany, which then did the rest.
Additionally I forgot to mention the withholding of shipments from China of the finished product that served as a public(visible) leverage.
Perhaps something could have been done via the EU. (No, I know, France/Italy/Spain/Germany are way too obsessed with their exports to PRC.)
Been there/done that - Sweden was unjustly bullied by China and got next to no support from EU. That was a mask off moment for some of us. It seems that for member states like Sweden and the Netherlands, we're supposed to just pay a lot of money in order to get toll-free access to the internal market.
Edit: I would welcome a split into EU North and EU South. Sort of like Aldi North and Aldi South.
EU North: UK (welcome back!), Norway (hello!), Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Estonia.
EU South: The other countries.
The CPC leadership have plenty of personal assets stashed in the EU/UK. It would be easy enough to take them to the cleaners by prosecuting them for violating Chinese AML laws.
What if I told you that China has more influence over the EU than it has over the Kamer der Staten-Generaal( the Dutch parliament), thus they are using the EU to pressure the dutch. The irony is that European Sovereignty is respected when all the countries of Europe are able to make their own sovereignty respected i.e. it is each of the individual states making their own sovereignty respected that actually elevates the sovereignty of Europe, the EU by pressuring, disregarding and relegating the sovereignty of the member states devalues the collective sovereignty of Europe. Additionally adversaries need only focus on having leverage over EU officials and the EU officials will do their bidding for them.
Headline should be:
The intervention by the Dutch government at the Nijmegen-based chipmaker Nexperia is being suspended.
I must say I feel very vindicated by this. The seizure of control of the company just for appointing a CEO from China (the horror!) never smelled right to me, but everyone in the previous comment section on this tried to rationalize it with "There must be some legitimate national security reason for the Dutch to do this". Clearly not much of a threat for them to cave so quickly!
The CEO is still out, the court did that (based on a case brought by other officers of the company). It can't be reversed by the Dutch government.
Found the Chinese bot!
It was not because he was from China. It was because he was directing funds to a Chinese company which did not make any business sense and leaking all kinds of intellectual property to China.
The Dutch move was dumb due to international power differences. The reasons to intercede were sound.
Don't Chinese FULLY own nexperia though? And I don't think bots would have their name highlighted in green and write on a fringe website compared to reddit or youtube
> It was because he was directing funds to a Chinese company which did not make any business sense and leaking all kinds of intellectual property to China.
Oh no, not the free market! Is this a leopard eating our face?
I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords, and let IP be consigned to ash.
The free market should be used to benefit $my_country and should be ignored if it hurts my interests. If the free market is hurting my country, then why play by those rules when I can just use my other resources to get what I want?
Does it need legislation system to pass this or judges can block this somehow? It’s pay walled so not sure.
They didn't exactly have any leverage
The Chinese continue to do state capitalism while the West is afraid to say "turnabout is fair play".
> The order that gave the Netherlands powers to block or revise decisions at Nexperia was dropped as “a show of goodwill”
Why wouldn't CCP/Beijing just be emboldened by this? Why do the dutch feel the need to show goodwill towards CCP?
(Edit: I see a lot of turbulence with this comment. I wonder why people seem to think it's invalid. The Chinese government runs these strategic companies very closely. China is not a democracy. It is a de facto dictatorship run by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party. Nothing of this really a controversial opinion.)
"show of goodwill" is politician-speak for capitulation. Taking over Nexperia caused a chip shortage for the german auto industry, which was an unintended consequence that they couldnt handle.
a bit tired of auto industry's "just in time" supply managment. they had the same problem when covid closed everything down and now 5 years later they still have not learned that they cant just order "enough for 1-2 months of production" and not more. It's not like the parts change in 2 months.
>Why do the dutch feel the need to show goodwill towards CCP?
They're not showing goodwill, they're desperate. Why did the Netherlands (read the US) think it's in any position to seize a company from China when the entire auto industry is dependent on Chinese chips?
I can't help but laugh at this, as a European even. China unlike our esteemed continent isn't going to have its businesses commandeered around by Washington, we should take a lesson in self-respect from them. It's also not on us to dictate what system of government they run their country on. Thankfully someone isn't putting up with Washington's crap.
$$$
That is almost always the case, but please expand.
Maybe I was being a bit flippant, but I don't buy the "goodwill" argument. It's probably went, and by the article, something like this:
China: Great, two can play this game, how about you now lose access to X,Y,Z that may be manufacturing, fabs, investments, rare earths, Chinese markets, etc.
Netherlands: Hmm, that costs more than this company by an order of magnitude. Take it.
This isn't taking into account back channel dealing, conflicts of interest or really anything besides a surface level reading of situation. They had them by the balls.
Idk. It's hard to hit The Netherlands in particular, since trade is with the EU as a block, not with individual countries.