Europe’s obedience test: one Chinese company, one US order

A Chinese CEO was recently ousted by a Dutch court for alleged governance and financial misconduct.

The company? Nexperia, which designs semiconductors. The timing? Ten months after Washington blacklisted its parent company, Wingtech. The justification? National security, over chips that go into dishwashers. The consequence? Europe handed over another piece of its industrial core because Trump said so.

If you’re not laughing, you haven’t been paying attention. The seizure of Nexperia was dressed up as a security precaution, yet the court’s own findings contradicted the government’s line. What played out was less a legal decision than a tribute to American authority.

Dutch officials insisting they acted “without consultation with any country whatsoever” stretched credibility for anyone not on Brussels’ payroll. Indisputably, the seizure followed US pressure. Chinese commentators needed no further proof; the online reaction was instant and merciless.

The choreography was too precise to be coincidence. And in politics, a coincidence is rarely a coincidence. Correspondence revealed that Washington had warned The Hague: remove the management or lose access to US technology. When Wingtech hit the US’s Entity List in December 2024, the countdown began.

The Dutch verdict arrived right after new US export restrictions. American officials made the choice explicit—under the September 30 BIS “50% rule,” Nexperia would face sanctions unless its leadership changed.

The Netherlands complied (within… a single day!) by inventing a legal pathway to transpose US policy into Dutch law. The suspension of CEO Zhang Xuezheng—who served a 17-month prison sentence in China in 2005—was more submission than justice.

It is worth noting that Nexperia produces legacy chips—ubiquitous, low-margin components that power cars and home appliances, not missiles. Yet even this triggered American intervention. The real issue was, therefore, not technology but ownership: the presence of Chinese capital inside European borders, employing Europeans and competing freely in a sector Washington now treats as a strategic monopoly.

The comedy was how little effort went into disguise. A 1952 law—the Goods Availability Act—was exhumed to justify the takeover, Cold War anxiety deployed to serve present-day surrender. The world competes in AI, quantum and chip design, yet Europe asserts its position by unearthing bureaucratic relics to enforce someone else’s rules.

This alignment has a clear political edge. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte dutifully bowed to US pressure on top chip-making equipment-maker ASML to halt exports to China, then moved to Brussels as NATO’s secretary general—a fitting advancement earned by cementing a system that synchronized industry and defense with American priorities. Not to forget, he later kissed the ring of “Daddy” Trump: “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way.”

The stance endures under his successor, Dick Schoof, former head of General Intelligence and Security Service, moulded by the same Dutch establishment that shaped Rutte. He views the future through the same American lens, cementing the Netherlands’ position as an operational outpost within a US-defined order: “I think together we made a big achievement in NATO today… agreeing on the 5%.” Unfortunately for EU citizens, in this system loyalty to Washington is rewarded, while their countries’ autonomy goes unpaid.

For China, the case crossed a clear line. Beijing had long assumed that while Brussels followed Washington on security, it retained autonomy and discretion over trade. Nexperia proved that illusion false: the US now dictates not only what Europe can sell but who can design on its soil.

As a result, Beijing moved quickly, restricting export permits for rare earth elements and tightening control over Nexperia’s factories in China, while suspending chip exports to Europe. What began as a political dispute soon turned into an industrial crisis. European carmakers warned of “potential significant disruption to vehicle manufacturing.”

Within days, China’s semiconductor shipments stalled, threatening to cripple German carmakers. Volkswagen informed production could stop within a week, Bosch prepared to idle its Salzgitter plant and the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) cautioned that shortages of electronic control units could halt assembly lines—revealing how Europe’s manufacturing base now lies between Washington’s sanctions and Beijing’s retaliation.

Across Chinese analysis, the same question keeps resurfacing: why engage with a bloc that enforces American policy even though it carries European branding? Contracts with European firms now look provisional, subject to US approval. What happens when a new blacklist redefines the next supplier as a risk? The message is already spreading through boardrooms—Europe cannot guarantee the stability of its own regulations.

Indeed, the August 2025 US–EU Framework Agreement sealed the capitulation. Brussels accepted 15% tariffs on most of its exports while abolishing “tariffs on all US industrial goods.” It went further by embedding American export controls into European law and pledging to buy US AI chips while policing “leakage” to “destinations of concern”, spelled China.

Marketed by Brussels’ leadership as “the best possible deal,” it turns the EU into the enforcement arm of US trade policy. Clause 19 completes the picture, binding Europe to “economic security alignment” and obliging it to screen investments and restrict capital flows.

Mainland companies have begun recalculating. Why build supply chains in a region where external political orders override contracts? Why invest where ownership can be nullified overnight by foreign pressure? Why transfer technology to partners who cannot protect it? Each of these questions now carries a single answer: look elsewhere outside of the EU.

As the Chinese saying goes: “If you plant melons, you get melons; if you plant beans, you get beans 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆.” Actions have predictable consequences, and Brussels will harvest the costs of its own submission. Europe’s semiconductor future relies on Dutch equipment, Chinese scale and American authorization. Remove one link and the entire system collapses.

Remarkably, EU leaders reacted with familiar defensiveness by casting China as the aggressor. Yet what stands out, seen from China, is not hostility but the absence of self-examination. Few—if any—European analysts have framed the Nexperia case as what it reveals: a public oath of obedience dressed up as policy that damages Europe’s own industrial autonomy at large.

Take European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Having devotedly endorsed Washington’s trade and tech agenda, she presented on October 21 the 2026 Commission program under the satirical banner “Europe’s Independence Moment,” threatening that “a new wave of Chinese export controls could disrupt production and increase costs.”

European leaders chant “independence” like a mantra, clutch the handcuffs, thank Trump for keeping the keys and then blame China for the bruises. Can anyone imagine Merkel, Thatcher, Chirac, Juncker, Aznar or Monti signing off on Europe’s defense tribute—5% to NATO—and a tariff framework that reads like a legalized rendition of sovereignty?

The Draghi Report already warned that Europe trails by two decades in high technology. Since then, the gap has widened into a void. America and China expand capabilities, intertwining economy, security and technology; Europe refines procedures and new forms of submission.

Recovery would mean creating financial instruments that free European technology from American capital, legal shields from extraterritorial control and leaders ready to withstand Washington’s displeasure in defense of Europe’s interests. None of it looks imminent.

The continent still depends on foreign capital and expertise, and there are only two sources left. One has chosen to extract and collect; the other is still deciding whether Europe intends to recover or to self-destruct.

Until European governments show they can resist American pressure, they will remain what they have become: provinces of an empire confusing coercion with alliance. From Beijing, this looks ludicrous. The tragedy is that Europeans seem to be the only ones who don’t see it.

Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa is a Hong Kong-based geopolitics strategist with a focus on Europe-Asia relations.