This week on Sinica, I welcome back Finbarr Bermingham, the Brussels-based Europe correspondent for the South China Morning Post, about the Nexperia dispute — one of the most revealing episodes in the global contest over semiconductor supply chains. Nexperia, a Dutch-headquartered chipmaker owned by Shanghai-listed Wingtech, became the subject of extraordinary government intervention when the Netherlands invoked a Cold War-era emergency law to seize temporary control of the company and suspend its Chinese CEO. Finbarr’s reporting, drawing on Dutch court documents and expert sources, has illuminated the tangled threads of this story: preexisting concerns about governance and technology transfer, mounting U.S. pressure on The Hague to remove Chinese management, and the timing of the Dutch action on the very day the U.S. rolled out its affiliate rule. We discuss China’s retaliatory export controls on chips packaged at Nexperia’s Dongguan facilities, the role of the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan in unlocking a temporary thaw, and what this case reveals about Europe’s agonizing position between American pressure and Chinese integration in global production networks.
4:34 – Why the “Europe cracks down on Chinese acquisition” framing was too simple
6:17 – The Dutch court’s extraordinary tick-tock of events and U.S. lobbying
9:04 – The June pressure from Washington: divestment or the affiliate list
10:13 – Dutch fears of production know-how relocating to China
12:35 – The impossible position: damned if they did, damned if they didn’t
14:46 – The obscure Cold War-era Goods Availability Act
17:11 – CEO Zhang Xuezheng and the question of who stopped cooperating first
19:26 – Was China’s export control a state policy or a corporate move?
22:16 – Europe’s de-risking framework and the lessons from Nexperia
25:39 – The fragmented European response: Germany, France, Hungary, and the Baltics
30:31 – Did Germany shape the response behind the scenes?
33:06 – The Trump-Xi meeting in Busan and the resolution of the crisis
37:01 – Will the Nexperia case deter future European interventions?
40:28 – Is Europe still an attractive market for Chinese investment?
41:59 – The Europe China Forum: unusually polite in a time of tenterhooks
Paying it forward: Dewey Sim (SCMP diplomacy desk, Beijing); Coco Feng (SCMP technology, Guangdong); Khushboo Razdan (SCMP North America); Sense Hofstede (Chinese Bossen newsletter)
Recommendations:
Finbarr: Chokepoints by Edward Fishman; Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abe Newman; “What China Wants from Europe“ by John Delury (Engelsberg Ideas)
Kaiser: The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and Milady (2023 French film adaptation)
