Dutch Business and China: ASML, Philips, Nexperia and the De-Risking Dilemma

The Netherlands has become the European test case for de-risking from China because its most important company sells the machines China most wants, its ports handle the goods China most sells, and one of its chipmakers belonged to a Chinese group until the state stepped in. ASML’s lithography tools are the single most contested technology in the US-China rivalry. Rotterdam is the main entry point for Chinese goods into Europe. And Nexperia, a former Philips and NXP unit in Nijmegen, was bought by Wingtech in 2019 and seized in all but name by The Hague in 2025. The resulting dispute cost European automakers weeks of uncertainty, produced a US$8 billion claim against the Dutch state and forced a new cabinet to decide how far it will go to separate the Dutch economy from Chinese ownership and demand. This article sets out the exposure of ASML, Philips, Nexperia and the trading economy, the sequence of the Nexperia crisis, and the strategy the Jetten cabinet has pursued since February 2026. It is part of the Netherlands Company Stories hub.

How exposed is the Dutch economy to China?

The Dutch economy is exposed to China in three distinct ways: as a market for high-value Dutch technology, as a source of imports that flow through Rotterdam to the rest of Europe, and as an owner of Dutch companies and infrastructure. The first exposure is concentrated in a handful of companies. ASML, NXP, ASM International and Besi sell equipment and chips into Chinese factories; Philips counts China as its second-largest market with 27 wholly owned or joint-venture companies and more than 17,500 employees there; and the agricultural and food sector sold €3.0 billion to China in 2025.

The second exposure is larger but less visible. The Netherlands exported €654.8 billion of goods in 2025 and imported €581.9 billion, and a large share of the import total is Chinese consumer and industrial goods landed at Rotterdam and re-exported to Germany and beyond. Dutch exports to China fell by €1.6 billion in 2025 while exports to Taiwan rose by €2.6 billion, a shift that reflects both chip export controls and the relocation of semiconductor demand. Foreign trade minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma put the EU-wide picture bluntly in July 2026: a Chinese trade surplus with the EU of about €1 billion a day.

The third exposure, ownership, is the one that produced the 2025 crisis. Chinese groups own Nexperia through Wingtech, hold stakes in Rotterdam container terminals, and Chinese technology is the largest single asset of Amsterdam-listed Prosus, as the Prosus story explains. Chinese investors have also bought into Dutch logistics, energy and technology firms over the past decade. The Vifo Act, in force since June 2023, now requires security screening of acquisitions in sensitive sectors, but Nexperia had been bought in 2019, before the law existed. The Port of Rotterdam story describes the infrastructure side of this dependence.

What is Nexperia and why did the government intervene?

Nexperia is a Nijmegen-headquartered maker of discrete semiconductors, the diodes, transistors and logic chips that cars and consumer electronics use in their billions, and it is important because it makes a large share of the world’s supply of components that are cheap individually but indispensable collectively. It was spun out of NXP’s standard products division in 2017 and bought by Shanghai-listed Wingtech Technology in 2019. It has wafer fabs in Hamburg and Greater Manchester, assembly and test plants in Dongguan in China, Seremban in Malaysia and Cabuyao in the Philippines, about 14,000 employees in 2024 and revenue of US$2.1 billion in 2022, when it shipped roughly 100 billion units.

The intervention came after three European executives at the company asked the Dutch government for help, fearing that CEO Zhang Xuezheng, who is also Wingtech’s founder, was preparing to move technology, expertise and production out of Europe to China. Wingtech had been placed on the US Entity List, and the US had signalled that the restriction would extend to its subsidiaries from the end of November 2025, which would have cut Nexperia off from American suppliers and customers. The executives argued that Zhang had not prepared the company for that deadline. NRC later reported that insiders described the goal as preventing intellectual property from leaking and operations from being shifted to China; CNN reported that Washington had pressed The Hague to act, which the Dutch government denied.

On 30 September 2025 Karremans invoked the Goods Availability Act, a 1952 law designed to secure supplies in emergencies, to give the minister power to block or reverse decisions at Nexperia. On 7 October the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, after an emergency hearing, suspended Zhang for what it called reckless leadership, appointed a non-Chinese executive in his place and transferred Wingtech’s shares to an independent custodian. The dispute became public on 12 and 13 October. The Nexperia seizure story covers the legal mechanics in detail.

How did China respond, and why did European carmakers panic?

China responded on 4 October 2025 by banning exports from Nexperia’s Chinese operations of certain finished and semi-finished components, which immediately threatened European car production because Nexperia’s Dongguan plant packages the majority of the chips that its European fabs produce. The Hamburg fab etches wafers; Dongguan cuts, packages and tests them into the finished parts that go to Bosch, Continental and the carmakers. Roughly 70 per cent of Nexperia’s European production passed through Chinese packaging, and the Dongguan site can handle more than 50 billion chips a year.

Within days the European automotive association warned that carmakers were close to halting lines, and reports suggested some plants were days from running out of parts. China’s commerce ministry blamed the Netherlands for global chip supply chaos. Chinese managers at Nexperia ordered staff to ignore instructions from the Dutch head office, and Wingtech accused the Dutch branch of plotting an independent supply chain. The Dutch minister countered that China’s ban rested on incorrect assumptions, and Prime Minister Dick Schoof insisted that the measures targeted mismanagement by one CEO rather than China.

The de-escalation came in stages. On 2 November, after talks mediated by the United States at the margins of a US-China summit, China allowed exports to resume on a case-by-case basis for civilian use. On 19 November the Dutch government suspended its order under the Goods Availability Act, a step widely described as a climbdown, while the Enterprise Chamber’s suspension of Zhang remained in force. Chip deliveries to European customers then resumed in what one trade report called a drip-feed. The episode showed that a Dutch legal instrument could be countered within days by a Chinese administrative one, and that the leverage in a packaging-dependent supply chain lay with the packager.

What has happened to Nexperia since the split?

Nexperia has effectively become two companies: a European and South-East Asian business run from Nijmegen under interim CEO Stefan Tilger, and a Chinese business operating under Wingtech’s control that the Dutch parent deconsolidated with effect from 1 October 2025, citing loss of actual control over Nexperia China, Nexperia Shanghai, Nexperia Wuxi and related entities. Nexperia China’s chief executive Zhang Qiuming announced three new product lines on 12-inch wafers in August 2026, compared with the 6- and 8-inch lines in Europe, which signals that the Chinese half intends to compete rather than reconcile.

The legal fight has widened. In February 2026 the Enterprise Chamber ordered a formal investigation into mismanagement at Nexperia and kept Zhang suspended. In January 2026 Nexperia alleged in court that Wingtech had damaged the company’s value in an attempt to regain control, and in late February it was reported that Nexperia was looking to separate from its Chinese owner, which was reluctant to sell. In May 2026 Wingtech announced international arbitration against the Netherlands under the Netherlands-China investment treaty, seeking more than US$8 billion in damages, and separately sued Nexperia for about US$1.2 billion in alleged losses. In August 2026 a Chinese court ordered the freezing of assets reported at about US$300 million. Wingtech also warned that it could lose its Shanghai listing because auditors cannot access the Dutch entity’s financial systems.

Commercially the Dutch-controlled business has recovered faster than many expected. Nexperia reported second-quarter 2026 turnover of US$355.6 million, up more than 18 per cent on the first quarter, driven partly by AI data-centre demand, and said it was ramping assembly in Malaysia and the Philippines with a target of an extra 50 billion chips of capacity in Malaysia by the end of 2026. The company employs about 9,000 people outside China, including about 300 in the Netherlands. Tilger said the results strengthened confidence in the recovery, while acknowledging that Malaysia would not fully replace the lost Chinese capacity of about 70 billion chips a year.

How do export controls shape ASML’s relationship with China?

ASML is the company at the centre of Western technology policy toward China, because it is the only maker of the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed for the most advanced chips and the dominant supplier of the deep ultraviolet tools used for mature ones. Since 2019 the Dutch government has refused export licences for EUV systems to China. In September 2024 it tightened controls to cover the most advanced DUV immersion systems, aligning with US rules, and in January 2025 it expanded the regime so that ASML applies to The Hague rather than Washington for licences on a wider range of tools. China nonetheless remained a major customer for older DUV machines throughout 2024 and 2025.

Pressure to go further has mounted in 2026. In June the US commerce secretary raised concerns about reports that an ASML machine had reached a restricted Chinese customer, and the Dutch government expressed irritation at new US plans for restrictions. In August NU.nl reported that Congress was advancing the “Match Act”, which would require allies to adopt US export policy on sensitive technology, banning ASML from selling older DUV tools to China and from servicing machines already installed there, with sanctions for non-compliance. Dutch officials lobbied in Washington against it; the bill had bipartisan support and was expected to be attached to the defence budget. At the same time Reuters reported in December 2025 that China had built a prototype EUV machine in Shenzhen with help from former ASML engineers, expected to produce working chips between 2028 and 2030, and in May 2026 Huawei said it would develop its own lithography technology.

ASML’s financial results suggest the company can absorb the loss of Chinese demand. It reported record third-quarter 2026 net sales of €11.7 billion and net income of €4.96 billion, raised full-year guidance to €44 billion to €45 billion and said planned capacity for 2027 and 2028 would not meet demand, with some customers asking to place orders for 2029 and 2030. CEO Christophe Fouquet also co-signed a May 2026 appeal with six other European technology leaders for government action on competitiveness. The ASML story covers the technology; for the China question, the point is that ASML’s growth is now driven by AI demand from TSMC, Samsung and Intel rather than by Chinese fabs, which makes further restrictions more politically affordable for The Hague than they were in 2023.

How are Philips and other Dutch multinationals managing their China business?

Philips, Arcadis and the broader group of Dutch multinationals with Chinese operations have each chosen a different point on the spectrum between staying and leaving, and their choices show that de-risking is a company-level decision as much as a government one. Philips, which returned to profit in 2025 with net income of €897 million on revenue of €17.8 billion, its first annual profit since 2021, continues to treat China as a core market for medical imaging, patient monitoring and personal health products. It has also been a victim of technology theft: in February 2025 US prosecutors indicted individuals for smuggling Philips trade secrets to a Chinese rival. CEO Roy Jakobs has focused the company on North America as its most important growth market and on €1.5 billion of further cost cuts by 2028, but has not announced a Chinese retreat. The Philips story explains how the recall crisis shaped those priorities.

Arcadis, the Amsterdam engineering consultancy, chose exit. On 29 September 2026 it announced a “reset” strategy for 2027 to 2029 that includes divesting its China operations and most of its architecture business, cutting about 1,000 jobs and concentrating on its highest-demand markets. CEO Heather Polinsky framed the move as focus rather than geopolitics, and it came weeks after Arcadis rejected takeover approaches from Canada’s WSP Global that valued it at about €4.7 billion. But the direction is clear: a Dutch professional services group with more than 34,000 employees decided that China was no longer worth the complexity.

Between these poles sit the companies for which China is a supplier or a competitor rather than a market. Dutch retailers depend on Chinese goods; the EU’s new import duty on low-value parcels, which the Dutch government decided in June 2026 to await rather than pre-empt with a national tax, has sharply reduced the flow of packages from Shein and Temu, and in July 2026 the EU fined AliExpress €550 million over illegal and counterfeit products. The port, the retailers and the logistics firms described in the Dutch e-commerce story are de-risking from Chinese platforms by regulation rather than by choice.

What is the Dutch government’s de-risking strategy in 2026?

The Dutch strategy is to screen investments, license technology exports and keep trading, rather than to decouple, and the Jetten cabinet installed in February 2026 has combined the hard instruments inherited from its predecessor with an explicit effort to repair the relationship with Beijing. The instruments are the Vifo Act for investment screening, the Goods Availability Act demonstrated at Nexperia, the export licensing regime for ASML and related firms, and EU-level trade defence on electric vehicles, parcels and subsidies. The cabinet also introduced a bill in August 2026 to expand the powers of the intelligence services, after Nexperia’s Chinese side published the names of Dutch intelligence officers in December 2025, and scrapped a proposal for extensive screening of foreign researchers in June 2026 after universities objected.

The repair effort was led by Sjoerdsma. On his July 2026 trade mission to Beijing he met commerce minister Wang Wentao and said both sides wanted to end a period of tension that he compared to a bumper-car ride rather than a bilateral relationship. He declared the Nexperia dispute settled at government level, while noting that the companies still had to reach their own agreement, and he raised forced labour in Xinjiang and the EU forced-labour regulation that takes effect in 2027. He also warned EU member states not to let China play them off against each other and said Beijing now wanted to avoid a tariff war.

The strategy has limits. The Match Act shows that the United States can force Dutch policy further than The Hague would choose. The Wingtech arbitration shows that interventions carry a price measured in billions. And the Nexperia split shows that a company’s Chinese operations can be lost entirely, not merely constrained. The cabinet’s calculation, shaped by the same business-climate anxieties described in the headquarters exodus story, appears to be that the Netherlands cannot afford either full alignment with Washington or full accommodation of Beijing, and must therefore manage each case on its merits while building the domestic capacity, from the chip cluster to Malaysian packaging, that reduces the cost of the next dispute.

What does the Nexperia case mean for Chinese ownership of European companies?

The Nexperia case has established that a European government can remove a Chinese owner from control of a strategically important company through corporate law and emergency legislation, and that China can respond by severing the company’s Chinese operations, with the result that both sides lose part of what they were fighting over. For Chinese investors in Europe the precedent is chilling: Wingtech paid several billion dollars for Nexperia in 2019 and now controls only the Chinese half, with its Dutch shares held by a custodian and an arbitration claim as its main asset.

For European governments the precedent is double-edged. The intervention worked in the narrow sense that the European business survived with its technology intact and is recovering. It failed in the broader sense that the Dutch state had to suspend its order within seven weeks, that European carmakers were exposed to a shortage over which The Hague had no control, and that the Netherlands now faces a US$8 billion claim and years of litigation. Economic affairs minister Karremans, who had privately expressed doubts about the intervention according to evidence published in November 2025, publicly stood by it in December, and TomTom’s chief executive was among Dutch business leaders who backed him.

The broader consequence is that Chinese acquisitions of European technology companies are now assessed against the possibility of a Nexperia-style outcome, which makes them harder to finance and insure. The Vifo Act would in any case screen a transaction like the 2019 purchase today. The more likely future pattern is Chinese greenfield investment in Europe, which creates jobs without transferring existing technology, and European divestment of Chinese subsidiaries in sectors where data or intellectual property is sensitive, as Arcadis has chosen. Comparable debates about Chinese ownership of infrastructure and technology are running in Germany and the UK, and readers will find the German case in the Germany Company Stories hub.

What can founders and investors learn from the Dutch de-risking dilemma?

The first lesson is that strategic importance is a liability as well as an asset. Nexperia’s products were commodities, but their ubiquity in cars made the company systemically important, which attracted state intervention from two governments at once. Founders building in semiconductors, energy, telecoms or data should assume that success will bring scrutiny and that ownership structures will be examined for geopolitical as well as financial risk.

The second lesson is about the sequence of control. Wingtech owned 100 per cent of Nexperia and still lost control of the European business within a week, because Dutch corporate law allows courts to suspend directors and sequester shares when mismanagement is alleged. Investors in Dutch companies, Chinese or otherwise, should understand the Enterprise Chamber’s powers before they rely on a share register.

The third lesson is that de-risking is a cost, not a slogan. Nexperia is spending on Malaysian capacity, Arcadis is giving up Chinese revenue, ASML is foregoing older-tool sales and the Dutch state is defending an US$8 billion claim. Each decision has been taken because the alternative risk was judged larger, but none is free, and the companies that managed best were those that had already diversified suppliers, packaging sites and customers before the crisis.

Finally, the Dutch case shows that a small, open economy can set precedents for a continent. The Nexperia intervention, the ASML export regime and the Vifo screening act are now reference points in Brussels and Berlin. For a company deciding where to locate sensitive technology in Europe, the Netherlands offers both the strongest protection against hostile control and the clearest evidence of what that protection costs when it is used.

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