China Demands Netherlands 'Correct Mistakes' Over Seized Chipmaker as Auto Supply Crunch Deepens (cnbc.com) 34
China's Commerce Ministry on Wednesday demanded that the Netherlands "immediately correct its mistakes" over chipmaker Nexperia, escalating a standoff that has disrupted global semiconductor supply chains and triggered warnings from automakers about component shortages. The Dutch government in September invoked a Cold War-era law to effectively seize control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker, reportedly after the United States raised security concerns. China responded by blocking Nexperia products from leaving the country.
Nexperia manufactures billions of foundation chips -- transistors, diodes and power management components -- that are produced in Europe, assembled and tested in China, and then re-exported to customers worldwide. These low-tech, inexpensive chips are essential in almost every device that uses electricity, from car braking systems and airbag controllers to electric windows and entertainment systems.
The Commerce Ministry spokesperson said the Netherlands "remains indifferent and stubbornly insists on its own way, showing absolutely no responsible attitude towards the security of the global semiconductor supply chain." Dutch Economy Minister Vincent Karremans has repeatedly defended the intervention. Auto industry groups have warned that disruptions have not been fundamentally resolved. Japan's Nissan and German supplier Bosch have flagged looming shortages, and the German Association of the Automotive Industry warned of elevated supply risks "particularly for the first quarter" of 2026.
Nexperia manufactures billions of foundation chips -- transistors, diodes and power management components -- that are produced in Europe, assembled and tested in China, and then re-exported to customers worldwide. These low-tech, inexpensive chips are essential in almost every device that uses electricity, from car braking systems and airbag controllers to electric windows and entertainment systems.
The Commerce Ministry spokesperson said the Netherlands "remains indifferent and stubbornly insists on its own way, showing absolutely no responsible attitude towards the security of the global semiconductor supply chain." Dutch Economy Minister Vincent Karremans has repeatedly defended the intervention. Auto industry groups have warned that disruptions have not been fundamentally resolved. Japan's Nissan and German supplier Bosch have flagged looming shortages, and the German Association of the Automotive Industry warned of elevated supply risks "particularly for the first quarter" of 2026.
Good plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Europe should indeed correct its mistakes. Mistake #1 being evolving into the planet's "bedroom community" where nearly everything of value is made elsewhere, by others.
Re:Good plan (Score:4, Interesting)
There is plenty of manufacturing in the EU. More than in the USA, both in absolute numbers and as a GDP percentage. Why do you think the orange shitgibbon whines about trade deficit with the EU?
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It makes it look like you have an obsession you can't see beyond.
With what? Facts? Justice?
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Precisely! Nexperia should start manufacturing either in Europe/Netherlands
They do manufacture in Europe.
The could move the pack-test work to an EU nation and simply cut China out of the process. There is really no need to ship the wafers of chips across the globe to cut, package, and test them, before finally sending the resulting chips out into the world. It is the lo
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Problem is: Europe's got a lot of ground to cover, they don't have a single government, and they're less prone to use import tariffs as a blunt instrument in every trade dispute.
Perhaps because they have more to lose and can inflict less pain on their trade partners than the US can.
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Tariffs add costs to imports. That cost increase is merely an instrument which can be used stupidly, indiscriminately, and inappropriately (like the Trump tariffs) or appropriately. As with any cost-structure adjustment, for it to have any impact at all, there must be positive effects for some and negative effects for others. Depending on your objectives the benefit can absolutely outweigh
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But it's not so smart to import the bottom-level economic migrants and their bottom-level social attitudes.
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It's fine to export the bottom-level production, as Europe has done.
No, it is not. Andy Grove explained this to you [slashdot.org] and the rest of the Western world 15 years ago, with reasons and examples. Every word of what he wrote then was self-evident to any thinking person at the time, and has only become more so since.
Summary lies by omission (Score:1)
What actually happened is that Dutch grabbed the HQ. I.e. the company bureaucracy.
Actual production, specifically everything but wafer supply is in PRC. Wafers are easily sourced elsewhere, which is what Nexperia China did. They're now de facto their own company that is supplying clients on its own, with no real input from Europe.
Dutch already admitted publicly that they didn't think this grab through. Minister responsible went on an interview and stated he didn't expect Chinese to do anything but surrender
Re:Summary lies by omission (Score:5, Informative)
This is total nonsense . The whole point of splitting out NXP was to combine all kinds of basic semiconductor stuff like diodes and mosfets. None of this was ever incredibly hard to replace and that wasn't the point. The thing was just to create decent quality large volume basic semiconductors.
Let set the context here a little bit. What happened was that the then-CEO of NXP Zhang Xhuezheng, was suspended from his company through the dutch legal system. He illegally and without proper structure tried to move company assets into his own company, which was temporarily prevented by this move. This is a form of corruption.
Zhang Xhuezheng previously spent more than a year in prison in china for... corrupt business practices including illegally gaining power over a company.
Haha, nope. That's a little funny because you got one part right but you missed the importance of it. The wafers yeah... with the components already on them. All that happened in china with those wafers was cutting parts from them. No they cannot just order some wafers elsewhere lol. Again, these are not complicated things like CPU's. They can manufacture them elsewhere. But no they cannot just order some different wafers.
Nope, where do you get your news? Chinese state media? Check your sources dude.
Right, says the guy on his ASML printed chips, possibly you would have been helped by a deepmind (UK) invented LLM as it would surely have told you about the errors you were posting.
Now that you have learned that the actual components were developed in Europe, how would you rate this line yourself?
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Just a little correction: NXP is the original company where Nexperia was split out of. Zhang Xhuezheng was CEO of Nexperia, not NXP.
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Thanks for the education.
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If you read your article, it just states they sourced 'wafers' for one type of product and even that one is far from production state. They are nowhere near being ready to just switch to a different supply chain. As I said, you can manufacture these products (and get them certified for global care manufacturing), just it isn't just 'let
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1. Goalposts moving rapidly. No.
2. He had a sit down with a reporter some time ago, where he specifically stated that Dutch had no plans for current situation, because he expected that taking the HQ would bring the entire company under control.
No idea why you thought a speech in the parliament would mention his failures. Are you completely unaware how modern Western parliamentary democracies work?
3. Those were the loss leading moments. When company got sold off to Chinese, those were largely spun off and de
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You said "Dutch already admitted publicly that they didn't think this grab through." and that your source is the minister himself. Show us the quote.
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By the way, Nexperia was hardly a very profitable company, it was just a spin-off of the 'uninteresting' parts of NXP. Sold.to make some cash. This basic component manufacturing was going to china eventually anyway and nobody really cares about this. However they need to operate within dutch law and what mister zhang did was not. That's all. Not sure why you are so stuck up about defending some corrupt chinese businessman that even china put in prison for that.
As for chinese consequences, china did nothing
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Yes, Reuters and the relevant minister in Netherlands are Chinese.
This Reuters which quotes the minister as saying the goals of the takeover were achieved? https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
Or maybe you'd like a direct quote from the minister: https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com] "I'd do it all again."
Your assertion that people agree this is a mistake is either a fantasy or a complete and fundamental failure of parsing English sentences on your part.
They seized a fab (Score:2)
The Dutch government seized a fab. It was a former NXP (i.e Philips spinoff) fab that they sold off as Nexperia when they got out of the discrete and standard logic business after merging with Freescale. They also sold off their RF power component business, which became Ampleon.
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They did not in fact "seize a fab". Fab was in PRC. They seized the HQ. They then commanded HQ to do things with the PRC fab. PRC fab proceeded to simply ignore the HQ, which it does to this day.
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Fun part: much of the world doesn't get paid regularly in private sector. Payroll delays are a norm in much of the world. Long delays are one of the biggest reasons for the worker protests in PRC IIRC.
Paying on time even when company is having problems is a norm mainly in developed world.
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Dutch already admitted publicly that they didn't think this grab through.
The Dutch publicly admitted that they not only got what they wanted (the fraudulent CEO removed) but that they would also repeat this in a heartbeat. Every other point you made was refuted by another poster already, so I'll leave this there.
Please stop getting your news from Fox and Friends, or their sister shitbags De Telegraaf.
No evidence of US involvement (Score:4, Informative)
It should be noted that these reports were purely speculative.
The minister involved has explicitly stated in an official statement to parliament that the US did not ask for this move and that there were no talks with the US about this in the leadup to the ban. While it is possible that he is lying, getting caught in a lie about that would be career suicide and he could have easily said that he cannot provide information about that because of national security reasons.
Once upon a time, it was believed that... (Score:3)
...increasing trade between nations would reduce conflict.
Then governments started using trade as a weapon
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