Talk about technological and commercial war leads us to look at United States and China. They are the two who star in the great conflict between vetoes and a race for technological independence. But between the Netherlands and China there is a bunch of look at me and don’t touch me. In the eye of the storm is Nexperia, a Chinese semiconductor company, but based in the Netherlands. After a public breakup and a civil war between the two headquarters, Nexperia China has just threatened something very big: they are capable of manufacturing wafers 12 inches… and the unit in Europe no.
And it is something that adds to that technological sovereignty that China pursues.
Summary of the sauce. Before getting into the matter, it is worth reviewing because history has gone from 0 to 100 in just a few months. Nexperia is a manufacturer that originated from the split of the Dutch company NXP Semiconductors. They are, as their name indicates, a semiconductor company, the material with which the chips that all our devices contain are created. China has been wanting to consolidate its semiconductor industry for years, even before Trump’s veto, and bought Nexperia in 2017 for $2.75 billion.
The headquarters were in the Netherlands, but the owner was a Chinese consortium backed by the country’s government. In October 2025, the surprise arrived: Netherlands confiscated Nexperia by surpriseallowing the country full control of its operations. Aim? Protect Europe’s chips. Consequence? Very risky move in relations with China that were already deteriorating.
The next move was breakup of the Chinese part of Nexperia with the European onethe stoppage of chip shipping which threatened world automobile production for a time and totally broken communications between both parties. It is not that the company was divided into two separate entities: it was that it was one body with two brains. And they didn’t speak.
Be careful what a mess. With this said, we return to the present. Although relations were still very tense, they seemed to have eased somewhat until, a few days ago, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce warned that tensions between Nexperia Netherlands and Nexperia China were flourishing again. It seems that the Dutch side had disabled the professional accounts of all your employees in China (we are talking about key work systems such as Office 365 and similar) and China said “yes? Well, I’m not sending you materials to make wafers.”
From China, this action was classified as unforgivable as it “seriously disrupted the company’s normal production and operations.” And the threat came: “if a new crisis arises in global semiconductor production and supply chains, the Netherlands will be to blame.” This is something that would affect, above all, to the automotive industryand we already have enough with the RAM crisis.
Shortly after, on March 6, Nexperia China reported that many operations had already resumed and Nexperia Netherlands, without denying the action, questioned whether it had really been as serious for the Chinese side as they were making it out to be.
12 inch wafers. The Dutch side was very well positioned in wafer manufacturing and was supplying them to Nexperia China before they stopped talking to each other. Since then, the Chinese side has secured suppliers and improved its technology on its own. And they are not doing badly.
In a statement published by Nexperia China, the company stated have started small-scale production of 12-inch wafers. In them, it “prints” the same components that are also manufactured in the Dutch part, but with a nuance: the Chinese wafers are larger.
The larger the wafer, the more you can “print” on it and the easier it is to develop large-scale production. This means more chips at lower prices due to economies of scale. According to the Chinese side, Nexperia Netherlands cannot manufacture 12-inch wafers in European facilities, so they now have the advantage.
a wafer
And in detail. The larger the wafer, the more it can be “printed” and the more chips can come off a single wafer.
Local supply. This has two implications. On the one hand, what we talked about: economies of scale and the ability for automakers to buy from China instead of the Netherlands. On the other hand, the demonstration that they can manage on their own with other suppliers.
Now, it esteem that the Shanghai plant has a production capacity of 30,000 wafers per month compared to Nexperia’s 83,000 in Hamburg, but of course, if they have found the key to producing larger wafers, in the end fewer wafers can yield more. And beyond all, it is a demonstration of the extent to which the two sides are going their separate ways and, in recent communicationsnone of them have any intention of fixing things.
And, in the end, it is one more example of something bigger: it is currently impossible to separate global technology from geopolitics.
Images | Steve JurvetsonJohn McMaster
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