The Dutch government’s seizure of chipmaker Nexperia from its Chinese owner Wingtech is a landmark moment in Europe’s evolution from one of the world’s most open trading blocs to one increasingly preoccupied by its economic security.
It is all the more striking coming from a small free-trading country with laissez-faire business instincts which approved the sale of Nexperia to Chinese investors in 2017 — a decision that even with the benefit of hindsight it must regret. With this takeover, the Netherlands has stepped straight into the struggle for technological supremacy between the US and China centred on the semiconductor industry.
Nexperia was one of many large-scale strategic takeovers by Chinese investors of western companies in critical technologies or infrastructure during the middle of the last decade. It is the first to be fully clawed back by a western government. It may not be the last.