China has blocked the export of certain products produced by the Dutch chip company, Nexperia, according to Bloomberg. This is the same company that the Dutch government recently seized from its Chinese parent company to prevent the transfer of what it called “crucial technological knowledge” from leaving the country. This action appears to be retaliatory and highlights the increasingly multi-polar world that is developing under the umbrella of rapid global expansion in AI capabilities, and a rush to secure important strategic chip development resources.
Chinese trade relations with Western nations have been far more fractious in 2025 than in years past. Following increasingly aggressive global trade policies, China has pivoted from integrating with the wider global economy to focusing more on shoring up its own semiconductor development and nearer-to-hand trading partners. Many Western nations have mirrored this in turn, with the Dutch government’s latest actions appearing to be just one more example of nations ensuring their own supply of silicon above almost all else.
All this does is make them more dependent on the US; this will only hurt them in the long run.
Dependent on the US for what?
This reads like the Dutch are protecting Dutch interests. Given the Dutch companies are integral to developing top-tier chips, I suspect they are trying to protect that industry and keep it in their country.
Dependency on financing trade in USD, dependency on US fossil fuels, dependecy on proprietary US technology, dependency on the US military-industrial complex, dependecy on US border and surveillance technologies, etc etc.
The US fosters dependency in all its allies to maintain the empire. China, and the BRICS bloc in general, offers an alternative. That’s why the US is forcing all its vassals to turn on China.
You seem to be posing this as if there are only two sides, and that the Dutch (and Europe in general) don’t have their own self interests.
Many policies lately from the EU have been pushing back on both US and Chinese interests.
Have the Dutch seized any US facilities?
Seems to me that Europe is picking its side.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dump_microsoft/
Dutch moving away from US based software companies to have more ownership of the digital infrastructure is pretty similar to locking down more of their hardware infrastructure.
And that was with two seconds of googling.
It’s a good move and I wholey support digital sovereignity, but it’s not enough to convince me that they’re actually breaking free. Wake me up when they actually start seizing facilities.
It is far from clear that dependency on the us is worse than dependency on China. A couple of years ago even suggesting it would be lunacy - it’s only even remotely credible just now.
It’s very obvious that dependency on the US is bad, though. Why not avoid complete dependence on one or the other?
What is causing “complete dependence on the US” here? Taking over one single Chinese company doesn’t do that.
And chipmaking is dominated by the US, China and Taiwan (which is not immune to influence from the other two parties, lol) so how exactly can one avoid dependency on or the other, except by balancing dependency between the two?
If you really think this means “complete dependence” then explain how.
Do you think China will want to keep doing business with someone that steals their shit?
Do you think they will completely stop doing business with someone that steals* their shit
*as much as this can be called theft, something which took place in specific non-arbitrary circumstances, rather than the Dutch government just thinking “I quite fancy that”
The UK undertook a similar action earlier this year when British Steel was threatened with going defunct by its Chinese owners. Business between the UK and China did not collapse as a result.
By realistic: China is continually carrying out low-level hostile actions against other nations - cyberattacks, IP theft, currency manipulation, and also this kind of attempt at industrial subordination. It’s realpolitik, which means that if it gets detected and a credible negative response, their reaction won’t be to cut off all trade; it will be to stop doing deals which they only wanted to do as a way of carrying out this kind of manipulation. If it were to cut off all trade, what you’re saying is that Western countries should roll over and accept abusive practices by China so as to avoid being dependent on the abusive USA. It makes no sense.
If you think that China is not actually doing anything that even deserves a response, then feel free to say so, of course.
I think China will continue to increase trade with the third world and leave Europe behind if doing business becomes unprofitable. Why would they bother investing if it’ll just get stolen? If you want to talk about realpolitik, the US wants its vassals in a state of dependency and doesn’t want them having a relationship with its rival. More realpolitik:
The US literally does all of this, in addition to election manipulation and propaganda peddling, and (in addition to the new trade war angle) that’s how it pressures allies into dumping China. This all fits into the new Cold War, how do you not see it?
You seem to be in a weird state where every hostile act that both China and the US carry out is a reason to stop doing business with the US but not with China - unless you want to reassess the starting point where you said the Netherlands needs to leave itself open to pressure from China in this instance, every though that won’t cause dependence on the US, only a shift in balance.
Even with the hostile trump regime, China is still more hostile towards EU states than the US is.
Litmus test: who bears responsibility for the war in Ukraine?
Yep.
Have every product of the world depend on china is significantly worst. It seems everyone started to realise how bad it is and start pulling back. Except US, that maneuver is insane.
Just because shit didn’t happen now doesn’t mean the next in line won’t decide to shit the bed.
No, the US is just pressuring all of its vassals into disinvestment from China to secure its own power. That’s it.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/10/13/dutch-government-takes-control-of-chinese-owned-chipmaker-nexperia.html
You claim these are US vassal, but then you also said to secure their power. You don’t secure your power with your vassal if you’re already “own” those state.
The US has to constantly reinforce its control over its vassals or they will start thinking about independence.
The US is yanking Europe’s leash to keep them from getting ideas.
Your obsession of US is next level.
It’s the global hegemon? The US rules the world, that’s why the UN is powerless to stop a genocide.
And the UN is powerless to stop myanmar war and Afghanistan/pakistan conflict and Russia invasion of Ukraine as well, do you even understand how UN works? And the topic doesn’t contain US at all, no one want to hear about your obsession on US.
The genocide is the tip of the iceberg, the US lurks in the background of all current events. The US is forcing Europe to do austerity to pay for war with Ukraine and to buy US gas, Europe is basically being turned into an export colony for the US and so they aren’t allowed to trade with China. The dollar is the global reserve currency!
Do you just think the aanti-China sentiment in Europe is happening all on its own? You can’t just ignore the elephant in the room.