By bizn_fun 
Nexperia confirmed to the BBC that its Chinese business had stopped operating within Nexperia’s governance framework and was ignoring instructions.
The company said it welcomed China’s commitment to resuming exports of its critical chips to global markets.
Xioaxue Martin, a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, says many in the Netherlands were surprised at how the government handled the case, since they’ve always managed their relationship with China carefully in the past.
“We’re a country that has always done very well with open trade, free trade. And this is really the merchant side of Dutch policy,” she says. “Only recently we found that actually, hold on – geopolitics makes it necessary to have more industrial policy, to have this investment screening, when in the past there wasn’t that much attention for this.”
Xiaoxue Martin is clear – it’s easy to go too far down the path of fearing what could happen as a result of doing so much business with a superpower like China.
“There’s a danger of making it seem as if China is this monolith, that they all want the same thing, and that they’re all out to get Europe, and to get the United States, when obviously that’s not the case,” she says.
“Most companies, especially if they’re private, they just want to make money. They want to be treated as a normal company. They don’t want to have this negative reception that they’re getting in Europe.”
If China is so far ahead of its rivals in its plans to buy into sensitive sectors, does that mean the race to dominate these arenas is already over?
“No! There’s gonna be multiple laps,” maintains Brad Parks. “There are many Chinese companies that are still trying to make these types of acquisitions. The difference is, now they’re facing higher levels of scrutiny to vet these inbound sources of foreign capital.
“So China makes its move. China is not the follower any more, it is the leader. It is the pace setter. But what I’m anticipating is that many G7 countries are going to move from the back foot to the front foot.
“They’re going to move from defence to offence.”