Nexperia Warns of Chip Quality Risks as China Arm Defies Orders From Dutch HQ
Udumbara
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Dutch chipmaker Nexperia has warned customers that it can no longer guarantee the quality or authenticity of chips made at its Chinese facilities, saying its subsidiaries in China have disregarded management directives from the company’s Dutch headquarters.
“Given the missing transparency and oversight over the manufacturing processes, we cannot guarantee the intellectual property, technology, authenticity, and quality standards for products delivered from the Nexperia facility in China as of October 13,” the company said.
China Units Defy Dutch HQ
According to Nexperia, the Chinese subsidiary has refused to pay for supplied wafers and is acting autonomously in violation of corporate rules. The Dutch parent company said it has suspended further wafer shipments to China following payment refusals and what it described as a series of unlawful acts, including the misappropriation of corporate seals, creation of unauthorized bank accounts, and issuance of false letters to customers, employees, and suppliers.The company said that while Chinese plants continue to produce, it cannot verify what is being manufactured or where the proceeds are going.
“Therefore, we cannot oversee if and when products from our facility in China will be delivered,” Nexperia said.
Amsterdam Moves to Secure Nexperia
The dispute began with the Dutch government’s unprecedented move on Sept. 30 to seize control of Nexperia, invoking the Cold War-era Goods Availability Act to prevent what it described as an “acute and serious threat to the continuity of the company and thus the preservation of critical technological knowledge, as well as production and development capacities in the Netherlands and Europe.”Authorities froze Nexperia’s assets, replaced its Chinese executives, and removed CEO Zhang Xuezheng after finding that key data and operations were being transferred to China. Control of nearly all shares held by Nexperia’s Chinese parent, Wingtech Technology Co. Ltd., was transferred to an independent Dutch administrator.
China’s commerce ministry has accused the Netherlands of having “interfered” in Nexperia’s affairs and said that its actions have undermined the stability of the global production and supply chain.
“We remain in contact with our Chinese and international partners, hoping to find a constructive solution that benefits Nexperia and both economies,” the spokesperson said.
Shift Toward Supply Chain Sovereignty
Analysts say the Dutch government’s intervention marks a turning point in Europe’s attitude toward Chinese technology takeovers.Sun Kuo-hsiang, an international affairs professor at Nanhua University in Taiwan, said the Netherlands’ move signals a deepening realization that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) industrial ambitions pose not only commercial but national security risks.
“First, if a single critical node in Europe’s auto industry were to fall under the control of the CCP, it would create serious supply chain risks,” he told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview. “Second, there’s the risk to technological sovereignty—the manufacturing know-how, production parameters, quality systems, and R&D teams that Europe has built up over decades could be entirely transferred to subsidiaries in China and absorbed into China’s industrial system, leaving Europe’s original base hollowed out.”
Feng Chongyi, associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia, said Europe is finally acknowledging that it is already in a de facto Cold War with the CCP.
“The Cold War was fundamentally a clash between incompatible systems,” Feng told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview. “To transfer technology to the CCP is to aid the enemy.”
