【By Observer Net, Qi Qian】

The Dutch government has caused a big mess by forcibly taking over the Chinese-owned company Ansem Semiconductor, leading to a "earthquake" in the global automotive supply chain.

Now that the situation has arisen, the Netherlands is not rushing to correct its mistake, but instead busy trying to shift the blame to the company's Chinese team.

According to Reuters on October 27, four Dutch sources familiar with the government's thinking provided reasons for the government, slandering the Chinese semiconductor leader, Wenxi Technology, the parent company of Ansem Semiconductor, claiming that the reason for the Dutch action in September was due to concerns that the Chinese team had begun to dismantle European operations and transfer production to China.

These sources said that the Chinese team had planned to lay off 40% of Ansem Semiconductor's employees and close the company's research facility in Munich, Germany. They also said that before October 1st, the Chinese team had transferred "confidential" information from the Manchester factory in the UK, including chip designs and machine setups, and planned to transfer physical equipment from the Hamburg factory. They did not provide any evidence.

These four individuals smeared the Chinese team, and they have their own ideas. They told Reuters that the Dutch government believes it can negotiate a solution with the Chinese side, reorganizing the management of Ansem Semiconductor into a unified "Netherlands-China structure".

The chips produced by Ansem Semiconductor are vital to the global automotive industry Ansem Semiconductor official website

In the context of Sino-US rivalry, the Dutch government recently cited a law never used since 1952, suddenly ordering Chinese semiconductor leader Wenxi Technology's subsidiary Ansem Semiconductor to refrain from making any adjustments involving assets, intellectual property, business, or personnel within one year starting from September 30th, under the pretext of "national security."

Publicly available information shows that Ansem Semiconductor is headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and is the core semiconductor business base of Wenxi Technology, focusing on discrete devices and logic devices. Its predecessor was a department of NXP Semiconductor, which became independent in 2017 and was fully acquired by Wenxi Technology in 2019, now as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wenxi Technology. In 2024, Ansem Semiconductor's revenue was approximately 14.7 billion yuan, accounting for about one sixth of Wenxi Technology's total revenue that year.

Face with criticism, the Dutch government and media have a unified stance, hyping up "national security" and "supply chain security." Dutch media quoted reports indicating that there were "indications" that Ansem Semiconductor planned to leak chip technology to China, posing a direct threat to Dutch national and economic security. The core reason of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs is also "ensuring supply chain security."

However, Wenxi believes that the scope and severity of the Dutch government's directive far exceed regular risk control, implementing an unreasonable external takeover on a normal operating enterprise.

From the timeline, this series of actions is hard not to suspect a carefully planned "plunder": The United States and the Netherlands have long cooperated closely in the field of chip industry export controls. Just a day before the Dutch government took action, on September 29th local time, the US government had just issued a new export control rule, imposing the same level of export control on Wenxi Technology's subsidiaries listed on the "Entity List" with more than 50% ownership.

The Financial Times also noticed that the Dutch government's actions "followed closely behind the US." American media Bloomberg further pointed out that the Trump administration had previously expanded the scope of sanctions, highlighting the increasingly strict scrutiny faced by Chinese enterprises in sensitive industries.

On October 14, court documents released by the Amsterdam Court showed that as early as June this year, US officials had already made their position clear to the Netherlands - if Ansem Semiconductor wanted to be exempt from the new changes in the US "Entity List", its Chinese CEO "must be replaced".

On October 23, Prime Minister Scholz of the Netherlands attended the EU summit in Brussels, Oriental IC

Our multiple departments responded, emphasizing that China firmly opposes the Dutch government's generalization of the concept of national security and the direct intervention in internal corporate affairs through administrative means. The Dutch government's move not only violates the spirit of contract and market principles, but will also severely damage the Dutch business environment, harming both sides.

Subsequently, some media visited, after the Dutch government's intervention, the Dongguan factory of Ansem Semiconductor limited shipments after the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, planning to implement "four days on, three days off". Wenxi Technology said that the Chinese region "independent self-rescue," connecting the domestic supply chain. However, "Chinaization" of the supply chain is not easy, involving technical transfers and customer certification challenges. Ansem Semiconductor is applying for regulatory exemptions, but there is no clear answer on when supply will resume.

The Dutch government finally realized that it had caused a huge disaster: seizing a Chinese-invested enterprise led to supply interruptions, causing a "earthquake" in the global automotive supply chain, affecting all US, European and Japanese automakers. Among them, the German automotive industry heavily relies on the chips produced by Ansem Semiconductor. It is reported that each car in Germany may be equipped with up to five hundred of these chips.

Several Dutch analysts said on the 27th to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post that this incident exposed Europe being caught between the US and China, relying on the US for security and depending on China economically, unable to meet the requirements of both and powerless. "Europe is actually powerless because whatever you do, it brings damage," said Frans-Paul van der Putten, founder of the Dutch consulting firm ChinaGeopolitics. "This is the core issue: you will damage your own security or economic position, or both."

Rare earth supply and the Ansem Semiconductor issue have seriously affected the European automotive industry, making EU member states uneasy.

Recently, Germany, France and the European Commission have repeatedly made threats through the media, declaring that they will take retaliatory measures against China, not excluding the use of trade "nuclear options". But seeing the large-scale shutdown crisis in the European automotive industry, and the Chinese side's unyielding stance, the EU was panicked.

According to Bloomberg, on October 27th local time, the European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said that China and the EU held the first round of video conference on the 27th, and the Chinese high-level technical delegation will visit Brussels on Thursday (October 30th) to discuss related issues with the EU.

This article is exclusive to Observer Net, and without permission, it cannot be reprinted.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7566106131366527531/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author and welcomes readers to express their opinions by clicking the 【top/down】 button below.