Some more context from a dutch news source[0]:

The ministry of economic affairs intervened out of a fear that crucial technological skills and capacities will leave the Netherlands and Europe. The ministry stated in a press release[1] that there was a threat of a "knowledge leak" (w/e that means exactly) and a possible threat to the European economy.

After this intervention the Dutch government can now stop or reverse decisions within the company. That's only allowed if those decisions are harmful to the interests of the company, or for the future of the company as a Dutch or European business, or to the retaining of this crucial value chain for europe.

The company can appeal this decision in court.

For context, the law that allows this all to happen was passed in 1952 and has never before been used. As much as I think our government is currently ran by a bunch of nincompoops, I am inclined to believe that something quite significant was about to happen for this law to get invoked. What exactly that was can for now only be speculated about.

I can recommend you run google translate (or equivalent) on the press release. It's as close as you can get to the source of this news for now. I can only imagine the government is going to be having plenty of debates on the topic coming up, seeing as this is a very rare use of a very heavy-handed tool.

[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2586270-kabinet-grijpt-hard-in-bij-ch...

[1] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2025/10/12/wet-b...

• itopaloglu83

  yesterday at 9:51 PM

  Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance.

  It’s a continuation of recent trends and closing markets.

  Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors.

  But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose.

  • onetimeusename

    today at 4:01 AM

    That has happened and not a lot came of it. Venezuela nationalized American oil projects under Hugo Chavez. If by hell breaking loose you mean law suits I guess so.

    • Sloowms

      today at 4:27 AM

      Ah yes, Venezuela famously only has lawsuits that happened to them. Maybe look up Guaido, the 3% polling self and US declared president of Venezuela.

      • Innervisio

        today at 9:46 AM

        "only has lawsuits that happened to them" that is not entirely true. Yes, lawsuits and sanctions happens, but the Venezuelan government played an awful game that they exactly knew what would happen to them. Full corruption and power play that didn't play out well. This is a list of many of the nationalizations Chavez did. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-venezuelas-nat...

      • zinodaur

        today at 4:49 AM

        And the huge American military force currently positioned off their coastline, blowing up boats!

      • thesmtsolver

        today at 5:32 AM

        Isn't Venezuela a defacto dictatorship now? Not sure the 3% is correct under these conditions.

        • pmontra

          today at 6:29 AM

          They left 3% to the opposition? The government won the general elections in Italy with 98.5% 96 years ago.

  • chvid

    today at 9:06 AM

    There is a difference between blocking a sale on natsec grounds and first allowing a sale, taking in billions of investment, and then 7 years later nationalizing the company on natsec grounds.

    • TacticalMalice

      today at 9:40 AM

      The company has not been nationalized.

  • noobermin

    today at 5:11 AM

    The age of globalism and unfettered free trade is over, and good riddance.

    • vladms

      today at 9:43 AM

      Some will win and some will loose without free trade as well. Or do you think without free trade everybody will be great?

      For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements.

      Sure, now in some countries we can associate free trade with consumerism, but it's not everywhere the same.

      • williamdclt

        today at 9:56 AM

        > For me consumerism seems much worse than free trade. Buying clothes and use it once, change the car each year or other similar behaviors seem unsustainable because nobody cares about the generated garbage or the energy/material requirements.

        I don't believe in putting the responsibility on individuals. Billions upon billions of whatever currency are being poured into ads, marketing, influencing, lobbying, propaganda (and whatever other manipulation mechanism I'm not thinking of), employing some of the most brilliant mind of this generation, to ensure that individuals are consumerist. Because that's what will make companies the most money, and "making more money" is the only incentive this society has in place.

        Show me the incentive and I show you the outcome: the outcome is enormous externalities. We need to fix the incentives, not expect individuals to somehow act against them en masse.

    • pjc50

      today at 8:25 AM

      People are going to miss it in the age of fractured, paranoid isolation.

    • globalnode

      today at 7:11 AM

      free for me but not for thee

      • motorest

        today at 7:30 AM

        > free for me but not for thee

        That's rich, coming from a country which outright bands foreign corporations from even operating within their borders, and those who they allow have to operate through a state-controlled corporate minder.

        • bryanrasmussen

          today at 8:18 AM

          >That's rich, coming from a country

          What country do you know Globalnode is coming from? Just interested in the high level of assurance.

          • yvdriess

            today at 8:31 AM

            He was talking about china because that's the subject in this story, not the poster's residence.

            • bryanrasmussen

              today at 8:43 AM

              OK, it just seemed like it was a response to the comment and not the story.

              on edit: thanks for pointing it out.

        • ulfw

          today at 8:41 AM

          Don't know any of these things for Tesla.

        • DiogenesKynikos

          today at 9:17 AM

          And then you actually go to China and are shocked to realize that Western companies and brands are everywhere. Starbucks and KFC on every other corner. Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW cars clogging the roads. Rich people wearing Italian luxury brands, middle-class people wearing Nike and Adidas athleisure wear.

          China is nothing like your paranoid fantasy.

    • jojobas

      today at 6:13 AM

      Too little too late. China will catch up on everything of importance, and we're on the hook for pretty much everything else.

    • cies

      today at 7:01 AM

      Only they will not admit it.

      The capitalist propaganda, "freedom", is so ingrained that we cannot easily paddle back on it. So we will become helplessly hypocritical instead.

    • ulfw

      today at 8:40 AM

      Yes let's go back to times where marrying a girl from a neighbouring town would raise eyebrows. So much better than "globalism"

  • roughly

    today at 2:44 AM

    It gets a lot less contradictory when you realize the principles are window dressing for the interests.

    Early America had no regard for intellectual property rights because all the good media came from abroad - then we built Hollywood and saw the light. The west pushes deregulation and free trade because we've got the money and the only thing that can keep us from sucking a market dry is government intervention. The Dutch just seized a company because a geopolitical opponent was using it to exercise leverage, which is also how TikTok became a sub-brand of Oracle.

    Nation states will use whatever words are necessary to justify their actions, but the game is and always has been power, leverage, and interest. Given the rise of China, I'm guessing we're going to get a lot more opportunities to tut and shake our heads about how hypocritical western governments turn out to be with regards to national economic interests.

    (And, to be clear, I'm not saying this is like it's a good thing. I'm not a government, I'm a person, so all I get is the pointy end of all this happy rhetoric.)

    • motorest

      today at 4:01 AM

      > It gets a lot less contradictory when you realize the principles are window dressing for the interests.

      I don't think this is the epiphany you think it represents. The whole point of laws and regulations is to protect interests.

      Do you think that any regime passes and enforces laws that are detrimental to their best interests?

      In free market economies, laws and regulations are put in place to foster competition, and antitrust legislation is in place to prevent anticompetitive practices. However, laws and regulations are also in place to prevent strategic interests from being captured or even threatened. The motivation is rather obvious and to the point. Where is this window dressing you speak of?

      > Nation states will use whatever words are necessary to justify their actions, but the game is and always has been power, leverage, and interest.

      Your post shows some degree of confusion, specially by the way you imply inconsistencies. There are none, and the whole point is rather on the nose. Internal competition and level playing fields are promoted as they pressure companies to improve their competitiveness. "Competitiveness" is the operating principle. Having a rival third-party perform an action that threatens your competitiveness is obviously not acceptable.

      • themgt

        today at 9:14 AM

        However, laws and regulations are also in place to prevent strategic interests from being captured or even threatened. The motivation is rather obvious and to the point. Where is this window dressing you speak of?

        And yet the sale was allowed - 7 years ago - and only voided now under cloak and dagger, via a never-before used law. The window dressing is the entire "international rules based order" we hear so much about. If it's all just interests, then you can't complain about Russia invading Ukraine, Israel annexing land from various neighbors, China taking Taiwan and seizing TSMC, etc.

        Having a rival third-party perform an action that threatens your competitiveness is obviously not acceptable.

        And yet that being acceptable is the entire basis of the free market system. So yes I'm just whistling past the graveyard, but the hypocrisy is real and there should be no crying about principles later. The embrace of "the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must" - just as the west's relative strength is at its lowest ebb in perhaps hundreds of years - is at the the very least a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.

      • DiogenesKynikos

        today at 9:21 AM

        There used to be a concept of enlightened self interest, in which countries agreed to play by universal rules that they benefit from in the long run, but which might not be in their favor in every particular case.

        Now, we're in an era of petty self interest, in which no one trusts anyone else, international institutions and laws carry no weight, and everyone is poorer and less safe in the long run.

    • TacticalMalice

      today at 9:43 AM

      The Dutch did not seize the company, but assumed control over certain aspects of its governance.

    • xenadu02

      today at 4:31 AM

      I think the issue is more complex than that but certainly vested interests / national interest is definitely one aspect of things.

      The west and the US specifically has operated on an open market policy partly as a result of two world wars we got dragged into in relatively short order. Economic integration was thought to reduce the likelihood of another great war.

      However what we have currently is a relatively developed economy (China) using currency manipulation and protective policies to prop up their own economy long after it has passed out of the "developing" phase. Plus massive and ongoing state investment and debt deferral. China effectively subsidizes massive amounts of economic activity that makes any US or EU tax breaks / protective policies look like chump change.

      When you have such a large market participant behaving that way it is little wonder that people lose their faith in free markets and want to intervene. Including doing explicitly punitive things against China. It is an attitude of China's own making. After all... China will not allow you to buy a freakin' popsicle stand as a foreigner let alone a shipbuilding company or anything else.

      China wants all the access to the rest of the world and wants everyone to buy their products... but they do not want to reciprocate.

  • like_any_other

    yesterday at 10:57 PM

    > But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose.

    As far as I understand, Samsung, TSMC, and SMIC are all closely guarded by their respective governments. And China doesn't (didn't?) allow foreign companies to operate in China without a local partner at all. So I don't see the irony - everyone practices protectionism, some are just more subtle about it than others. Some China-specific examples:

    tmnvix points out the perfectly analogous Chinese restriction of rare earth exports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572420

    China imposes more trade and investment barriers, discriminatory taxes, and information security restrictions than any other country by a vast margin. - https://ecipe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/DTE_China_TWP_R...

    As with most countries, China has adopted some policies aimed at protecting or promoting its domestic industries, including targeted quotas, subsidies to certain key industries and rejection of patents in critical industries. - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-china-prote...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 - government plan with securing first local, and the global key markets, for indigenous firms, the acquisition of foreign technology companies, and independence from foreign suppliers, as explicit goals.

    • itopaloglu83

      today at 12:38 AM

      I said it that way because I don’t like the hypocrisies in general, and I said European because the comment I responded to combined Dutch and European markets into one.

      It would be foolish to sell off a great value like ASML or others that adds incredible value. But one should also not get mad when other countries do it, because they see their industries as valuable things as well.

      Our markets are just getting more closed and different groups are being formed. Let’s hope other high value companies gather their IP rights as well.

      • motorest

        today at 4:27 AM

        > It would be foolish to sell off a great value like ASML or others that adds incredible value. But one should also not get mad when other countries do it, because they see their industries as valuable things as well.

        This reads like a straw man argument. No one gets mad when other countries do it. At most, you see complains of protectionism being unilaterally imposed while benefitting from your competitor's openness. See for example the criticism directed at the likes of China for preventing foreign companies from even investing in their domestic market without a government-minder-as-a-partner scheme, while China throws a tantrum when there is even a hint of suggestion that Chinese companies should be subjected to the same type of treatment when operating abroad. See the case of TikTok, for example.

        • adrian_b

          today at 8:00 AM

          China has the right to protest, because nowadays the Chinese companies are not "subjected to the same type of treatment".

          There is a huge difference between establishing from the beginning clear rules that set limits to foreign investment, like in China, and changing the rules afterwards, after luring foreign investors, and then taking ownership of their assets, like for Tik Tok and Nexperia.

          Obviously I agree that USA and the EU have acted very foolishly in the past by exporting technology to China (foolishly for the national interests, while a few have been greatly enriched by this), but at least they followed consistent policies, not like now, when they change the rules of the game whenever they see that they are the losers.

          Philips Semiconductors should have never been sold and become non-Dutch, but if they have been so stupid as to do this, they should assume their responsibility and finance the creation of a new European semiconductor device manufacturer, to ensure the independence of hostile entities.

        • throwaway2202

          today at 9:22 AM

          Not the case when taking into account recent history, or old history and politics. Obviously to say china was the country historically getting faraway lands to fall in line by economic means is opposite of reality. Tiktok is also political and so on. And yes they got mad when other countries do it. At least they used to, I think less so recently but I’m not sure since I don’t bother reading the news anymore when it feels like a repeat.

        • cies

          today at 7:05 AM

          China never claimed it's markets were free to enter by foreigners. US/EU did.

          If tit-for-tat is our policy, then we should at least be upfront about it and enshrine it in law, instead of using some ancient law to slap China with: that's arbitrariness.

          • meekaaku

            today at 8:53 AM

            Reducing/eliminating those mandatory joint ventures were a requirement for China to join WTO. But in practice it delayed these reforms.

            • cies

              today at 9:13 AM

              Everyone who screws over the WTO has my sympathy.

              Anyway, the Dutch should then make a law that demands WTO status or smth. As this is NOT nicely applying rule of law.

    • satvikpendem

      today at 1:58 AM

      > And China doesn't (didn't?) allow foreign companies to operate in China without a local partner at all

      Tesla was the first to buck this trend.

      • consumer451

        today at 7:02 AM

        The next question is: why did China give Tesla this unprecedented deal?

        The answer I heard at the time was to get local suppliers and workforce up to Tesla standards.

        It appears to have worked out for China quite nicely.

        • carlhjerpe

          today at 7:36 AM

          That answer is American propaganda, Teslas (especially earlier ones) are famous for their crappy build quality. Tesla would be nothing without the Elon hypetrain.

          Chinese Teslas had higher standards early on, panels aligned and such.

        • eunos

          today at 8:13 AM

          Catfish effect. Ensure local players just don't become welfare queen mooching subsidy and incentives from govt both local and national.

        • gman83

          today at 7:29 AM

          Well yeah, they used this playbook with Apple as well.

          • consumer451

            today at 7:31 AM

            We do not appear to be very smart as a country.

            • immibis

              today at 7:56 AM

              It's not a country - it's a collection of individual billionaires. Each billionaire involved in these kinds of deals gets richer, and has no reason to care about anyone else.

              • consumer451

                today at 8:03 AM

                Yes, but we’ve apparently chosen to run our country in such a way.

      • seanmcdirmid

        today at 2:20 AM

        Just for cars. Microsoft has been independent in China since the late 90s, although they had to find a partner to do Azure.

        • motorest

          today at 4:48 AM

          > although they had to find a partner to do Azure.

          By "finding a partner" you actually mean have Azure-branded services provided by Chinese companies through isolated data centers.

          Which kind of proves OPs point.

          • rswail

            today at 9:16 AM

            Same as AWS ("cn" regions) which often has different rules, especially with cross-region comms.

            Same applies to the US gov cloud regions and Apple's iCloud.

          • pmontra

            today at 6:31 AM

            Do they use the same Microsoft software and the Azure APIs that are available in the rest of the world?

    • DiogenesKynikos

      today at 9:33 AM

      > And China doesn't (didn't?) allow foreign companies to operate in China without a local partner at all.

      This is one of the most persistent misunderstandings about China.

      China had a closed, planned economy. It began opening up to foreign investment in the 1980s, but not all at once in every sector. China's general approach has been gradual, instead of the "shock therapy" that the ex-Soviet Union went through (which destroyed its economy).

      China initially allowed foreign investment in certain sectors, with conditions like involvement of a local joint-venture partner. An example of this was Volkswagen building a factory in Shanghai in 1984, with the Chinese company SAIC as a local partner with 50% ownership.

      Over time, the number of sectors that are open to foreign investment has increased (most sectors are now open), and the rules on investment have been loosened. For example, joint-venture requirements in the automotive sector were phased out and completely eliminated by 2022. Tesla completely owns its operations in China. Toyota has announced that it is buying out its JV partner. Other Western automotive manufacturers have taken majority stakes in their operations.

      China has been moving towards more openness to foreign investment over time, not less. It does have policies like "Made in China 2025" that are intended to move up the value chain, and avoid getting stuck making low-value plastic toys forever. China wants to be like the US and EU, after all - a developed economy that manufactures lots of high-tech goods.

    • cma

      today at 6:49 AM

      Yeah Asian tigers mostly didn't follow the narrow comparative advantage guidance and instead did state protection of industry to develop it: https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...

      The US did the same when it was young, along with large instances of exfiltrating tech (Samuel Slater, kicked off the American industrial revolution).

    • wagwang

      yesterday at 11:18 PM

      What about the suez canal or iranian oil fields

      • drnick1

        today at 1:23 AM

        They are controlled by their respective governments, but realistically that power is limited, because they know that "Western" powers would wage war if necessary. So in reality there is a tacit understanding between corrupt local governments and foreign powers to keep access more or less free.

        • motorest

          today at 4:53 AM

          > because they know that "Western" powers would wage war if necessary.

          Why do you feel the need go single out "the west"? I mean, where do you think the container ships crossing the Suez go to and come from? Do you think that the likes of China would be totally ok with their main trade routes being severed and instead having to go all the way around Africa?

          You're framing things as if there's still a British empire syphoning the economies of their colonies all the way from Great Britain, with no one else involved or committed to any trade whatsoever.

          • gpvos

            today at 5:37 AM

            Maybe not so much the Brits, but the French still have exploitative relations with their African ex-colonies; look up the CFA franc.

            • motorest

              today at 7:16 AM

              > (...) the CFA franc

              Why do you think this is relevant in discussions over who would respond to shutting down the Suez canal? I mean, do you have a map?

      • like_any_other

        yesterday at 11:31 PM

        What about them? The claim, or rather implication, was that Western powers would never allow equivalent protectionist policies, such as preventing the export of key industries and skills, to be enacted by other countries. Yet such protectionism is routine in China (and many other Asian countries), and "whole hell" did not break loose.

        A few more than half century old examples don't change what we can all see is the case in the present day.

        • shtzvhdx

          yesterday at 11:42 PM

          The British, French and Israelis literally went to war against Egypt over the Suez.

          They only backed up when the US told the Brits and France they would tank their economies still on US life support.

          And, pray, why did the Machado win the hypocrisy prize on Friday? Why are American ships outside the waters of Venezuela?

          • fsckboy

            today at 12:51 AM

            >The British, French, and Israelis literally went to war against Egypt over the Suez.

            The British and the French were concerned about the Suez, but Israel was not dependent on the Suez and went to war over their navigation being blockaded by Egypt in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran, which was a violation by Egypt of maritime law. Aqaba is in the Sinai peninsula which is also bounded by the Suez.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_passage_through_the_Su...

            • shtzvhdx

              today at 3:47 AM

              [dead]

          • lmm

            today at 2:16 AM

            > The British, French and Israelis literally went to war against Egypt over the Suez.

            > They only backed up when the US told the Brits and France they would tank their economies still on US life support.

            But they did back off. The US was willing to stand up for Egyptian sovereignty even against their own allies. That isn't an example of non-western countries being unable to enact protectionist policies, it's an example of the opposite.

            • bgwalter

              today at 3:36 AM

              Stand up for Egyptian sovereignty? The U.S. unseated the UK as one of the dominant forces in the region and controlled the Middle East ever since.

              I suppose installing el-Sisi is also an example of protecting Egyptian sovereignty:

              https://www.cato.org/commentary/ten-years-after-coup-us-stil...

            • shtzvhdx

              today at 3:39 AM

              [dead]

          • spookie

            today at 4:06 AM

            Venezuela has threaten war against their neighbours. Maybe a little bird told their president to do so [1], but still...

            [1] https://www.latintimes.com/nicolas-maduro-losing-it-venezuel...

        • neves

          today at 1:09 AM

          It looks like that to do it, first, you need to have some atomic bombs.

          But talking seriously, the OP didn't say that other countries never do it. Just that the powers have innumerable examples of coups to knock out governments that do this. A lot of them were democratic and popular governments.

        • wagwang

          yesterday at 11:52 PM

          Sure but can we just all drop the pretense that sovereignty and property rights mean anything. The only thing that really matters is power and how you get it. You can do protectionism if you are powerful, you can take whatever you want if you are powerful, etc etc.

          • C6JEsQeQa5fCjE

            today at 3:14 AM

            "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must" has been written down as geopolitical reality by Thucydides around ~400BC [1].

            For some reason, over the past few decades the powerful countries from the West employed rhetoric to suggest that their actions are guided by principles and morals. That was most likely a reaction to a huge wave of anti-colonial revolutions and national liberation struggles that tore the Western empires apart. However, USA and Israel have taken off the mask over the past 2 years, and that weasly rhetoric is now over.

            [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos#Melian_Dialogue

    • croes

      today at 3:27 AM

      > And China doesn't (didn't?) allow foreign companies to operate in China without a local partner at all. So I don't see the irony - everyone practices protectionism, some are just more subtle about it than others.

      And the west always said that China is bad for doing it.

      That’s the irony part.

      • motorest

        today at 4:32 AM

        > And the west always said that China is bad for doing it.

        "The west" criticizes China because the ruling regime imposes a series of arbitrary restrictions to foreign companies, including outright banning them, while demanding that Chinese companies should have unrestricted access to foreign markets.

        You are now faced with an exceptionally rare event where a member of "the west" enforces restrictions that are similar to the ones China broadly imposes on foreign companies, but does so on an isolated incident. And you call that irony.

        • immibis

          today at 7:57 AM

          The comment chain is saying that the west does the same thing and China criticizes them for it. This is both ways and it's hypocritical.

        • croes

          today at 4:41 AM

          We‘ll see how rare and isolated this is will be.

          Beware of the beginnings.

          • motorest

            today at 4:42 AM

            > We‘ll see how rare and isolated this is will be.

            Why do you presume this is bad?

      • Gud

        today at 3:46 AM

        It’s not ironic. The Chinese are engaging in this behaviour, while they have had full access to western markets, arguably detrimental to the west.

        So now Europe are doing the same thing.

        • flybarrel

          today at 4:30 AM

          and that action is perfectly fine. But it is then hypocritic to claim one is more justified than the other

          • motorest

            today at 5:03 AM

            > and that action is perfectly fine. But it is then hypocritic to claim one is more justified than the other

            Not really. Everyone was extending courtesies to China, but China opted to unilaterally reject the notion thay others could receive the same benefits they were enjoying. Now you're seeing this sort of courtesies being pulled for the first time. And you opt to frame this as hipocricy?

        • croes

          today at 4:37 AM

          It’s ironic. China just did it first. I can’t call something wrong and then to the same.

          If, for instance, we call out China for surveillance of their citizens and then start doing the same, isn‘t that ironic?

          • carlhjerpe

            today at 9:10 AM

            I can, if someone assaults me I'm either running away or swinging back. We gave them access to our markets, they didn't give us access to theirs. What this is is just "playing even".

            This is not the same as surveillance, that's internal affairs. This is external affairs.

          • today at 5:28 AM

    • skinnymuch

      yesterday at 11:29 PM

      [flagged]

  • nashashmi

    today at 9:27 AM

    When these kinds of procedures were first promoted, China was a non-communist entity, aligned with western countries. After China was overtaken by CCP, China is now considered “adversary” after being called “non-aligned”, in similar vein to Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Not even Cuba is on this list.

    So it is true that the Western first world aligned countries have greater access to each others assets. And there is a dark network at play at trying to limit the same to second world and third world nations.

  • mc32

    yesterday at 10:58 PM

    Of course the preferred option is what the Chinese do which is to never let that happen in the first place or if you do allow foreign investment always keep a 50.1% stake in the entity and exfiltrate any tech from the venture you need .

    • itopaloglu83

      today at 12:31 AM

      I’m not very familiar with Dutch company structure but after a certain percentage you’re usually privy to trade secrets etc. so it’s dangerous even then.

      And my point has nothing to do with Chinese or Dutch or European, even though those are the examples I used.

      The main thing is that it was a mistake to sell vital industries, and some people are really hypocritical when other countries do something like this, but in this particular case they’re finding out reasons to side with the Dutch government. I just want consistency, it is seldomly okay to allow any other entity into critical industries.

  • hopelite

    today at 4:19 AM

    That’s not quite correct. It wasn’t the foreign entity purchasing something, or they wouldn’t have allowed all the foreign entities purchasing things. It is more accurate to say they didn’t care as long as they thought they had the advantage and letting the foreign entity buy critically important companies and industries was a means for grooming them or working them to serve your interests. What “America” has realized is that their plan to develop China into an asset/ally simply did not work, nor that they’ve totally empowered them and likely the Chinese were intentionally sharing false data to give false understanding of how they were doing overall.

    We’ve recently seen a major reversal on China in particular, because it has dawned on people they were being played, not that they were the player.

  • HPsquared

    yesterday at 9:55 PM

    "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."

    • itopaloglu83

      yesterday at 10:08 PM

      I wonder how this would affect patent applications, since after such an event, some countries might not respect patents for their internal markets.

      • markus_zhang

        today at 1:04 AM

        I think it depends on how many gloves are taken off. China in its position would want to sustain global trade and actually more and more respect the current international order, if there is any.

        But I don't think the other players want that order to live forever, so we will see. I just hope we don't get WW3, and that's good enough for me.

      • dgfitz

        yesterday at 11:27 PM

        Like… China?

        • itopaloglu83

          today at 12:45 AM

          The coke recipe has never been patented, afaik, and similarly certain high-end things were patented only because the main company was hiring a subcontractor to do something. For example, Samsung flat out copied iPhone exactly almost.

          So, my thinking is that there could be less patents, because they’re less likely to share the technology and patents might let others copy stuff.

          • Intermernet

            today at 7:45 AM

            Samsung didn't copy the damn iPhone. This is revisionist history. HTC was on the scene for popular Android smart phones before Samsung, and they also didn't copy the iPhone. Early Nokia Symbian devices were on the scene before HTC and they also didn't copy the iPhone. Touch screen phones were going to happen. Apple made the first, popular one, but they were going to happen.

          • oblio

            today at 4:45 AM

            > For example, Samsung flat out copied iPhone exactly almost.

            Which iPhone?

            • snovv_crash

              today at 6:19 AM

              The one with the rounded corners, obviously.

              • oblio

                today at 9:52 AM

                They're similar but hardly "clones", I find that the Samsung one has enough of its own flair, especially the back.

                https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone-pictures-1827.php

                https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9000_galaxy_s-pictures-311...

    • cies

      today at 7:06 AM

      "For my friends, the law; for my enemies, arbitrariness."

  • mschuster91

    today at 7:58 AM

    > Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance.

    The problem with China is that the "free access" was always one-sided as we did not insist on reciprocity - not for the Internet, not for tourism, not for companies, not for goods.

    We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions.

    And look where that got us. They lock in their population in a way reminding me of the GDR/Stasi era - if you're not an obedient citizen, you don't get permission to travel, everything is subject to surveillance and the one will of the Party -, they use their access to the Internet to steal, hack and run secret police organizations while locking their population behind the Great Firewall, they buy up our companies and shift crucial knowledge back to China. And in the meanwhile, good paying jobs in our countries were lost en masse to China, what used to be high-quality products that would last many years if not decades got replaced by China made ultra cheap junk.

    • mtrovo

      today at 9:02 AM

      You're talking about it as if it was a bug, it was not. I'm pretty sure a generation of MBAs got raised and retired really rich shifting manufacturing jobs to China. The narrative about them not being open is just a way to cope with their rise now and get rid of any blame.

      > We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions.

      Lol, when you have to convince people that working in services instead of manufacturing is the future, that's what you get. Mindset is also a big issue, I know enough people who played the Erasmus game and graduated in double the normal time just by coasting that I think it's just normal at this point. And the problem with this spiral is that it just compounds, Europe is shifting to a continent of pensionists, highly educated people that live with their parents til their 40s and nepobabies playing airbnb landlords.

    • yupyupyups

      today at 8:45 AM

      We got back slave labour and offshored manufacturing pollution.

      Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.

      • mschuster91

        today at 8:54 AM

        > offshored manufacturing pollution

        One might be tempted to say that offshoring the manufacturing pollution was the point - the Silicon Valley is the US' top Superfund site for a reason [1]. Now it's not Western countries that get to deal with the legacy of a few decades of exploitative capitalism, it's China, Taiwan and India which are out of sight, out of mind to us.

        > Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.

        Indeed but that's a niche market which means R&D costs alone make products so much more expensive that it's basically impossible to compete... and for the stuff that is made domestically, manufacturers love to go for "planned obsolescence" and other strategies to turn consumer spending into recurring revenue - always remember BMW and subscription seat heaters.

        [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...

    • khana

      today at 8:36 AM

      [dead]

  • hulitu

    today at 5:04 AM

    > Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors.

    But they did it.

  • chrisco255

    yesterday at 11:40 PM

    It's not a "free market" to allow a foreign communist country to own or control your companies or resources, whether strategic or not. The entire arrangement is governed by diplomacy between two states. FWIW, it never has been the case that everyone was a fan of "the world is flat" theory of capital and labor markets.

    • immibis

      today at 8:00 AM

      Actually that is the free market

    • HeavyStorm

      today at 12:23 AM

      Psst, your bias is showing! Tuck it in...

  • skinkestek

    today at 7:15 AM

    > But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose.

    Russia has nationalised a number of Western companies since 2022, even McDonalds.

    Nothing happened.

    • padjo

      today at 7:32 AM

      Yeah relations between Russia and the west are famously normal right now.

    • notTooFarGone

      today at 7:25 AM

      I have a feeling the function that tell us "if hell breaks loose" has something to do with number of nukes ready and waiting.

    • today at 7:20 AM

  • bdangubic

    yesterday at 10:58 PM

    USA is nationalizng Intel and under this administration more of the commie shit is coming :)

    • gerash

      today at 12:08 AM

      The argument I have heard about the US taking 20% stake in Intel is that when a company asks for federal money then it’s only fair if the federal government gets some equity in return.

      You can’t socialize losses and privatize gains.

      • JumpCrisscross

        today at 6:20 AM

        > argument I have heard about the US taking 20% stake in Intel is that when a company asks for federal money then it’s only fair if the federal government gets some equity in return

        Great forward-looking concept. Terrible ex post facto. The precedent set is that the government can demand equity for past favours at any time.

        Also, now that the U.S. owns a stake in Intel, where does that leave competitors? We're already seeing a push to force AMD and Intel to merge [1].

        [1] https://www.tomsguide.com/tech/us-government-considering-cas...

      • itopaloglu83

        today at 12:41 AM

        > You can’t socialize losses and privatize gains.

        Yes, yes, and yes.

        We kept doing this, a bank or company stretches too much after making record profits, and then cries for federal funding and free money.

        The federal reserve is a lender of last resort and they shouldn’t have given that much money without any collateral etc. Even if they just kept the stock and then sold it afterwards, we wouldn’t be in this much debt. We spend trillions covering private losses, this was plain stupid.

        • JumpCrisscross

          today at 6:21 AM

          > federal reserve is a lender of last resort and they shouldn’t have given that much money without any collateral

          The Fed only lends against collateral.

        • bdangubic

          today at 12:59 AM

          easiest way to get downvoted on HN is to point out that we are the largest socialist country on the planet exactly because of this. there isn’t any shit we won’t socialize losses on (farming, banking… you name it, US has got your back)

          • satvikpendem

            today at 2:00 AM

            Socializing is not the same as socialist per se, the latter of which has the specific definition of workers controlling the means of production, and I don't see that anywhere in the US much less the world.

            • bdangubic

              today at 2:03 AM

              you can throw any semantics at this you want and re-define it however you see fit. but there are few things more socialist than government taking a stake in companies. if this Intel story came out or Venezuela or China we would be crying a foul saying “oh look at that socialist shit, glad I live in America”

              • satvikpendem

                today at 2:05 AM

                Sure, I don't disagree on the argument, I'm just saying that people have been using the word socialism wrong for so long that it now just means when the government does something, basically.

      • bdangubic

        today at 12:57 AM

        if we are not a communist country (everyone seems to think that we are not) why the F would we socialize losses?!?

        • JumpCrisscross

          today at 6:21 AM

          > if we are not a communist country (everyone seems to think that we are not) why the F would we socialize losses?!?

          Hold on, the logic is any country that socialises anything to any degree is communist? Where the hell did you get that from?

          • Intermernet

            today at 7:57 AM

            If you use the word "Socialise" then the current trend of reactionary ill-informed is to assume "Communism". It's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had.

            • JumpCrisscross

              today at 8:31 AM

              > it's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had

              OP [1] is the first person to make the argument that socialising anything implies communism in this thread. The entire shtick is a straw man. It doesn't need to be argued if it's only brought up by the side tearing it down.

              [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575045

    • Intermernet

      today at 7:56 AM

      Calling the current US administration "commie" wan't on my bingo card. I swear most people these days have no actual concept of the things they argue against.

    • kapone

      yesterday at 11:12 PM

      [flagged]

      • bdangubic

        today at 1:13 AM

        :)

  • FpUser

    today at 1:06 AM

    >But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose."

    We live in a "Rules Based Order" - one rule for thee, another one for me.

  • incompatible

    yesterday at 10:19 PM

    This has always been the case, to some degree, but I think it will be a much bigger factor now that so many have accepted that Neoliberalism is dead and no longer give it lip service.

  • next_xibalba

    yesterday at 11:47 PM

    The Chinese heavily subsidize their companies and have large government bureaus that strategically guide industries over long time frames. For example, the CCP has been on a long, intentional path to destroying all international solar manufacturers via subsidies, dumping, etc.

    This is not how free markets function.

    • MediumOwl

      today at 7:37 AM

      You are right. China does not really implement free market without government interaction. Then again, neither does the US or any other country for that matter.

      The US used its massive state surveillance apparel to spy on essentially every country in the world, not only for diplomatic advantage, which you might argue would be fair game, but also to steal industrial secrets and promote US companies (see e.g. https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m... for France, one of their supposed allies).

      Paraphrasing you:

      > The US heavily subsidize their companies and have large government bureaus that strategically guide industries over long time frames. For example, the US has been on a long, intentional path to destroying all international corn producers via subsidies, dumping, etc.

      The US essentially destroyed the traditional crop growing in Mexico by a combination of subsidies and free trade agreements.

      It is _true_ that China does not play a fair free trade game. It is _not true_ that the US, or any other country, does. (The reasons for it should be obvious btw, free trade only works if legislation is more or less the same everywhere, otherwise it's just stupid.)

    • ta20240528

      today at 7:40 AM

      > For example, the CCP has been on a long, intentional path to destroying all international solar manufacturers via subsidies, dumping, etc.

      You should see what Microsoft did. Forgetting the corruption the open document format, free/subsidised licences for students is almost the same thing.

      Let's rather choose a set of principles and apply them without exception?

    • higginsniggins

      today at 12:11 AM

      A free market just means that people are allowed to buy and sell what they want. If a government decides to help some industries that is irrelevant.

      It stops being free when government attacks economic activity, not when it promotes it.

      • nine_k

        today at 12:30 AM

        "Dumping" (selling at an artificially low price) is widely considered an attack on economic activity of the competitors, even though it may spur the economic activity of the consumers of the products being dumped.

        In this regard, the Chinese government pouring large subsidies into solar panel production both spurred the economic activity around installing solar panels, and attacked / thwarted in around production of the panels themselves, if the production happens outside China. Only the US was able to somehow develop solar panel production.

        • higginsniggins

          today at 4:25 AM

          "attack on economic activity of the competitors"

          Thats competition. It is a feature of markets.

          not a bug.

          • LunaSea

            today at 5:26 AM

            Not when its done with the help of a government.

      • maximus_01

        today at 1:02 AM

        I'm not really disagreeing with you as it's not like there is a 100% true definition of a free market, different people can have different conceptions, but the original Adam Smith / classical view is that a free market should essentially be 100% driven by the private market on supply and demand - with as little government intervention as possible on either side of the ledger (subsidy or blocking)

        • throttlebody

          today at 2:03 AM

          Monopoly is a free market game and thete is only one winner. Free markets as such is an utopia dream.

          • maximus_01

            today at 2:11 AM

            Except it isn't at all. The properties to buy all have a fixed price, costs of houses/hotels are fixed, rents are fixed and can't be adjusted, and most importantly, a) you can only buy a property if you randomly happen to land on it and b) people have no choice of what property to stay at (again, chosen by random dice)

        • flybarrel

          today at 4:32 AM

          mmm by that definition, which market is truly free market again? I'm not sure you can find one tbh

          • hvb2

            today at 5:50 AM

            Commodities, large number of buyers and a large number of sellers all buying/selling an equivalent product.

            No buyer has power to set prices and no seller does either.

    • today at 2:53 AM

    • philosopher1234

      yesterday at 11:49 PM

      Lol, how is this not a free market? Apple subsidizes dozens of organizations internally to advance its strategic interests, what’s the difference?

      • lmm

        today at 3:11 AM

        Corporate internal markets are well-known as non-free, and when a sufficiently large company is picking and choosing winners in a national economy that's also not a free market.

        • philosopher1234

          today at 5:52 AM

          I think this concept is an exercise in fantasy. There’s simply no such thing as a free market. Why we single out subsidy as non free is arbitrary. What activities constitute legitimate free market behavior? There’s no actual logically sound distinction. The real distinction is “what we do is free market and what our opponents do is not”

          • lmm

            today at 8:02 AM

            > There’s simply no such thing as a free market. Why we single out subsidy as non free is arbitrary. What activities constitute legitimate free market behavior? There’s no actual logically sound distinction.

            Sounds like a nirvana fallacy. Yes, nowhere has a perfectly free market, just as nowhere has a perfectly corruptionless justice system and railroad tracks are never perfectly parallel. But there are definitely markets that are less free than others and actions that distort markets further, and it's right to call those out.

      • next_xibalba

        yesterday at 11:51 PM

        I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the difference between Apple and the Chinese government.

        • philosopher1234

          yesterday at 11:53 PM

          I’m not hearing an argument, and I won’t be thinking one up for you. Seems like only a difference of degree to me.

          • maximus_01

            today at 1:06 AM

            I'm not here to debate whether free markets are good or bad, but governments have a privileged position versus private companies, and effectively operate above the law (again at least compared to private companies). Any government intervention takes us away from a free market, either a little bit or a lot, depending on the action. Apple is a private company. Anything it does is really part of the free market, at least in the original meaning of that as described by Adam Smith and co.

            • nicoburns

              today at 3:56 AM

              > governments have a privileged position versus private companies, and effectively operate above the law

              A lot of private companies effectively operate above the law too! In theory the law can be enforced on them. In practice it often isn't.

            • philosopher1234

              today at 1:34 AM

              We’re talking about China subsidizing goods that it sells in another country. This is bread and butter “free market” behavior. Literally every company in the world does this one way or another.

              • maximus_01

                today at 1:56 AM

                No, that is not the free market at work at all. I agree it happens however. We simply don't live in a 100% free market world.

                • philosopher1234

                  today at 3:10 AM

                  I bet you can’t name a single company that doesn’t perform some critical function at a loss.

              • bdangubic

                today at 2:09 AM

                “subsidising” and “free market” are antonyms we learn in 3rd grade language arts class :)

                • philosopher1234

                  today at 3:10 AM

                  How about “loss leader”? Ever use napkins at a diner? Buy Costco chicken? I think you are repeating things you were taught but they aren’t true

                  • bdangubic

                    today at 3:22 AM

                    I guess I have heard it all, the Government is providing napkins at diners and buying up Costco chicken, missed that one in the budget

                    • philosopher1234

                      today at 3:41 AM

                      My friend, what is so special about the government? If a company uses its massive profits in one area to crus competition by selling at a loss in another area, this is the free market, and when a government does it it is something else? I think you have not thought this through

                      • maximus_01

                        today at 7:38 AM

                        Private companies do things to maximize profits. They might lose money on some stuff to make more on other things, and there might be some gunk in the system but they are almost all laser focused on making bigger profits.

                        Governments have lots of other incentives (like job creation, elections, income distribution)

        • itopaloglu83

          today at 12:27 AM

          Well, Apple and Chinese government are one and the same when it comes to spending billions to further their agenda, that’s why that wasn’t a good example.

          Yes, they do favor their own companies and provide subsidies etc. that’s not the problem though, the problem is that they’re undercutting other companies by selling below cost thanks to those subsidies. Otherwise, we would have to call our farming subsidies the same.

          I was originally trying to point out that it has always been important to keep your vital industries secure, it was very stupid of Intel and others to transfer so much technology abroad (to anyone) just to increase their margins, I think ASML did the best: You can purchase our machine, but that’s pretty much it.

• contravariant

  today at 9:54 AM

  I'm also inclined to believe the reason for the decision was intelligence and not politics, because if it was political the parties responsible likely wouldn't shut up about until the next election. As of now there's been effectively 0 reaction from any political party. Though maybe that will change.

• tmnvix

  yesterday at 7:34 PM

  > For context, the law that allows this all to happen was passed in 1952 and has never before been used.

  Interesting parallel here with China recently invoking - for the first time - their own legislation from the 50's to ban rare earth exports for military uses.

  • walkabout

    yesterday at 8:22 PM

    Probably not an awesome sign if multiple actors are invoking never-used laws that were created while WWII was still fresh on everyone's mind.

    • markus_zhang

      yesterday at 8:30 PM

      Let’s hope this one is still cold.

    • awesome_dude

      yesterday at 9:39 PM

      s/while WWII was still fresh/the cold war was

  • infinet

    yesterday at 10:15 PM

    Netherlands imported more CeO2 (a rare earth) from China than any other country, with 517 metric tons during the first half of 2025.

    • whp_wessel

      today at 5:51 AM

      with Dutch stats like this it’s always important to note what’s for Dutch use or transporting through the Port of Rotterdam.

  • legacynl

    today at 7:05 AM

    Who cares what their legislation says. Xi and ccp can change that at will at anytime.

    • ta20240528

      today at 7:59 AM

      So can Trump and USA.

      If the west want's the other 7 billion to care, you're going to have to find some principles and live by them. Without exception.

  • dylan604

    yesterday at 8:18 PM

    How can you say what the minerals were actually used for though is the question I always have in these types of situations. There are multiple uses of the minerals. Since I've now gotten a literal boat load of the minerals from you, I can use those minerals on other things which now frees up my personal source of minerals on the things you didn't want them used in. In the spirit of the agreement, I'm in full compliance all while achieving the thing you didn't want me to achieve. It's nothing but Pilate washing his hands

    • dgfitz

      yesterday at 8:23 PM

      Are you tracking that harvesting REM is a nasty business with a lot of “don’t look” environmental impacts? As such, most countries don’t do it, or have an infrastructure for it.

      • dylan604

        yesterday at 8:33 PM

        https://rareearthexchanges.com/best-rare-earth-mining-compan...

        Plenty of US companies ready and willing. They've finally gotten an administration that is of like mind on screw the environment and dig dig dig.

        • markus_zhang

          yesterday at 9:32 PM

          US also needs all those factories and machinery to process the stuff.

        • dgfitz

          yesterday at 8:41 PM

          So, you agree?

          • dylan604

            yesterday at 8:54 PM

            Agree with what? What is it that you think is a gotcha here?

            • dgfitz

              yesterday at 8:57 PM

              Most countries don’t do it, including the US.

              “Ready and willing” is quite the turn of phrase.

              • dylan604

                yesterday at 9:13 PM

                I've seen US numbers along 70-80% is imported. That leaves 20-30% domestic. Some of the REEs are 100% imported, so that's a different issue. But you seem to be implying that the US is 100% importing all REEs with no domestic production at all. That's not true. Yes, some production is slowed due to environmental issues. Some of it is a different nature along the lines of "why mine yours when you can buy someone else's". You keep yours in the ground until you have to get it. You have some small production just to keep the know-how, but you keep the stove down to a simmer from a boil.

                • tmnvix

                  yesterday at 9:41 PM

                  > Some of it is a different nature along the lines of "why mine yours when you can buy someone else's". You keep yours in the ground until you have to get it.

                  My understanding is that a large part of the issue is processing capacity/ability - not mining of the ore. In fact, a significant amount of ore mined in the US is sent to China for processing. I don't think it's a simple case of the US standing up some processing plants in 1-2 years. If that were the case, wouldn't you think it would've happened by now? Is US leadership that bad that they failed to address this risk? Or - more likely - is it because solving the issue will take a lot more than some quick investment?

                  This is a huge issue for the US MIC. Plans (e.g. with regard to Iran) are going back to the drawing board for sure.

                  • phil21

                    yesterday at 10:52 PM

                    > Is US leadership that bad that they failed to address this risk?

                    I mean, quite obviously? Borne by the simple fact of... here we are discussing it?

                    It doesn't matter how easy, quick, or hard it is right now. What matters is leadership is so bad it was allowed to reach this point to begin with, and even a decade ago it was immediately obvious that it was a giant vulnerability that has not even started on beyond corrected in any meaningful way.

                • dgfitz

                  yesterday at 11:10 PM

                  You’ve seen numbers, so you make uneducated conclusions.

                  I’m so fucking glad I’m not on social media.

                  • dylan604

                    today at 12:55 AM

                    Uneducated conclusions like seeing 70-80% being imported means losing access to the exporters would be devastating? Seeing those numbers shows exactly how far away the US is from being self reliant? See how it means that the US is in a weak negotiating position, and that any bolstering from the orange man is pure bullshit? Please, enlighten me where these uneducated conclusions are wrong.

        • fakedang

          yesterday at 9:46 PM

          USA does not have the refining capacity which will take another 8 years to build out.

          • kapone

            yesterday at 11:22 PM

            Wrong. We don’t need to build refining capacity. We just need to remind China that who’s the big dog, which we seem to be doing.

            They’ll fall in line quickly enough.

            • fn-mote

              today at 12:01 AM

              I really cannot tell if this is sarcasm (seems not?) or trolling (sounds like it).

              How are we reminding China that the US is a big dog? By imposing tariffs? By demonstrating our ability to do work domestically that they believe us unwilling or incapable of doing?

              What does this even mean, to be a big dog in the modern world? It seems more like a large ship listing to one side … if it collapses there will be a lot of small ships damaged in the wake.

            • kaibee

              yesterday at 11:57 PM

              Aye yea, the war will be over by Christmas!

              I've heard this one before.

              • magicalhippo

                today at 2:32 AM

                  Remember, Mommy,
                  I'm off to get a Commie,
                  So send me a salami,
                  And try to smile somehow.
                  I'll look for you when the war is over ---
                  An hour and a half from now 
                

                https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Songs_and_Lyrics_(Lehrer)/So_...

              • dylan604

                today at 12:08 AM

                Operation Warp Speed 2.0

            • csomar

              today at 6:36 AM

              > We just need to remind China that who’s the big dog, which we seem to be doing.

              Time to short the US dollar and load up on Bitcoin.

  • trhway

    yesterday at 9:18 PM

    I always wondered how the large unified world of Roman Empire with running water and sewer fell apart (and backwards) into multitude of small feudal pieces with no technology to speak of for the 1000 years after Roman Empire. I think our modern civilization is probably at the beginning of similar process.

    • D-Coder

      today at 1:52 AM

      _Washington Post_ just had an article about why (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/12/america-r...).

      "In 1984, a German historian compiled 210 explanations historians had suggested for Rome’s fall, from lead poisoning and barbarian invasions to Christianity, moral decline and gout.

      After studying dynamic civilizations such as Athens, Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic, I can attest that there is no single explanation. Each golden age had its own character and its own downfall."

      • stock_toaster

        today at 3:59 AM

        I always figured it was a combination of the volcanic winter of 536[1] and the Justinianic plague[2] (which happened right as the eastern roman empire was reconquering the western empire to reunify).

        [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 and https://www.science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-ye...

        [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian

      • trhway

        today at 2:25 AM

        And i have my own ideas why it fell :) My point though ins't about pure why. It is about why it went into such feudal fractal mode.

    • hermitcrab

      yesterday at 11:17 PM

      As I understand it, the Roman Empire was fuelled by expansion (stealing other people stuff), enabled by their exceptional military machine. Once they could not profitably expand any further, they were in trouble.

      • Jensson

        today at 2:51 AM

        It lasted for many centuries after they ran out of stuff to conquer, so no.

    • zigzag312

      yesterday at 10:26 PM

      Aren't you exaggerating it?

      • trhway

        yesterday at 10:38 PM

        I lived in USSR, and know first hand that it means to be separated from common technological space. USSR wasn't that small, especially if one adds Eastern Block, yet it was falling behind the world becoming fully incapable to produce their own comparable computers, cars, etc.. If world get to split into such islands, the speed of technological progress will fall dramatically while social progress may go fully backwards. If you look at some ideologies rising around the world - they are straight medieval, and in many cases only connectedness to outside world has been preventing them from taking over their "islands".

        • zigzag312

          yesterday at 11:29 PM

          Sorry, I probably should have quoted to which part I was referring. It's:

          > with no technology to speak of for the 1000 years after Roman Empire

          While it's true that some technology declined in the West, it wasn't as dramatic as you've suggested. Popular media also often exaggerates it.

          https://www.britannica.com/technology/history-of-technology/...

          Adding USSR into the discussion greatly increases complexity of the discussion. From analysis I've read, central planning is supposedly fine when country doesn't have much industry, because to start things up, it can provide essential investments and starts organizing production. But when country is somewhat developed, efficiency starts to matter and top-down approach to decision making of central planning vs bottom-up decision making mechanisms of markets produce different results. Politics and other things are important factors too, but I think that would be too much for this discussion.

        • achierius

          yesterday at 10:59 PM

          As in -- "no technology to speak of" is a gross misrepresentation of the reality of the middle ages. The fact of the matter is, they were strictly more technologically advanced than the classical Romans, with inventions like the heavy plow and three-field rotation improving agricultural productivity significantly beyond what Romans had achieved.

          • thaumasiotes

            yesterday at 11:02 PM

            > The fact of the matter is, they were strictly more technologically advanced than the classical Romans

            No, they were more advanced in certain ways, but the original contention is correct that they were less advanced in others. Notably they were unable to build domes. They were also less productive, so less advanced in an overall sense.

            • zigzag312

              yesterday at 11:34 PM

              What do you mean when you say they were unable to build domes?

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medieval_Arabic_and...

            • oblio

              today at 4:50 AM

              Only the Western Roman Empire fell and even that part was fairly on track to recovery once Charlemagne came into the scene.

              The fall of the Roman Empire is a pop history trope at this point.

              • trhway

                today at 5:28 AM

                Charlemagne empire wasn't an interconnected fabric of roads, trade, centralized administration and so forth, ie. it wasn't all that that Roman Empire was, and all that having gone is the fall of Roman Empire. Charlemagne empire was just an aggregation of conquered lands under his personal rule which thus he easily divided between his sons.

                • oblio

                  today at 9:47 AM

                  Yes, but my point was that a large state was created and managed centrally for quite a long time, and even the successor states were large.

                  More than that, technology continued to evolve. The Romans had nothing like Medieval plate armor, for example. There are many examples of better tech from the supposed "Dark Ages".

    • markus_zhang

      yesterday at 9:32 PM

      I think we are fine in term of infra -- I don't work as a civil engineer, but considering companies in my city repair the roads every year /s they probably retain the knowledge.

      • galangalalgol

        yesterday at 9:47 PM

        How easy is the machinery and tools needed to keep all the infrastructure running? Earth movers are pretty maintainable and barely depreciate. Survey tools though? They have gotten famcy right? Water management has gone quite high tech in some ways. I could see them falling apart kind of like when some hospitals had to revert to paper tape logs. It didn't scale anymore.

        • fn-mote

          yesterday at 11:54 PM

          > Earth movers are pretty maintainable and barely depreciate

          Beware hardware DRM locking up the repairs. That would make everything more fragile.

      • trhway

        yesterday at 10:03 PM

        The infra today is internet and semiconductors which run it, as well as global shipping without each we end up without even necessities.

      • fakedang

        yesterday at 9:45 PM

        Exactly. Building roads and aqueducts were empire-level knowledge skills in Ancient Rome, performed by the army legions. Thankfully they're highly localized skills today.

    • selimthegrim

      yesterday at 9:27 PM

      Why stop there why not Indus Valley Civilization

      • trhway

        yesterday at 10:19 PM

        our knowledge (at least my knowledge of it) is much much smaller that that of Roman Empire, and in particular i don't know whether the fall of that civilization demonstrated the effect of splitting into multitude technologically inferior pieces stagnating for such a long time after that.

  • fakedang

    yesterday at 9:43 PM

    This is it.

  • this_user

    yesterday at 9:42 PM

    That whole REE thing is more of a scare tactic than anything. REEs are really not all that rare, and the current imports of REEs into the US are worth around $200-250M annually. That is millions, not billions. It's actually a laughably small amount.

    The main reason that it's mostly China producing them may simply be due to the fact that the volumes are so small that building your own industry is not really worth it.

    • maxglute

      yesterday at 11:25 PM

      Strategic REEs, i.e. heavyREE (Dysprosium, Terbium) are infact exceptionally rare, as in GEOLOGICALLY RARE. They are produced in China, because China (and Myanmar deposits controlled by China) are where ionic clays containing strategic HREEs can be economically extracted at scale. It's not just building altenrate HREE (empahsis on H) is not worth it, the technology simply doesn't exist to do so in other geologic deposits, i.e. all the har rock REE US+co has access to. The fact is PRC controls 90% of deposits and 99% percent of processing for elements that enable high temperature magnets, high power sensors, EW aka all the good shit that enables modern military capabilities... which was designed BECAUSE PRC commericialized process on specific geologic deposits that enabled commoditizing those materials. US built their miltary overmatch on material science and dirt that PRC controls and is nearly exclusively geopgraphically bound to PRC, with no short/medium term alternatives. PRC as monopoly supplier has much more complete ability to enforce export controls. This is just MIC specific, there's also stuff like dysprosium for highend capacitators where PRC has functionally 100% control, i.e. less performant alternative materials would effective regress performance by 10-25%, comparable to losing node size.

      • emmelaich

        today at 12:01 AM

        I really wonder how much rare earth element deposits are not found for want of looking. Not much reason to source them yourselves if the country (China) uses them for products that you're going to buy.

        According to this map, China has vastly more. But is there something special about China/Myanmar geologically? I guess being downstream of the Himalayas is something.

        https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rare-eart...

        • defrost

          today at 12:29 AM

          The clays are all over the world, the processing to extract the REE's of interest is still intensive regardless.

          "According to this map" is essentially meaningless w/out a map specific definition of "reserve".

          The terms "reserve", "resource" and their variations are misused outside of technical literature that cites whether they are defined via a JORC or other classification.

          The bias toward China in that map likely comes from two notes:

          * "proven" reserves - as in tested and estimated to some higher standard, as opposed to "we know there's a lot 'over here' but we haven't spent $X million on a drill assay program yet.

          * "controlled or owned" by China - Chinese companies are majority shareholders in joint ventures that source raw materials across the globe (they source concentrates from Australia, from Peru, from elsewhere, in addition to their home soil deposits). This means a number of maps might show all REE deposits owned by Chinese companies as on the books for China (as that is where much of the processing of concentrates occurs).

          For interest:

          North Stanmore in Western Australia has emerged as one of the world's most extraordinary heavy rare earth element (HREE) deposits, particularly for dysprosium and terbium in North Stanmore. (Sept, 2025)

          https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/north-stanmore-heavy-rare...

          https://www.australianmining.com.au/victory-unearths-world-c...

    • tmnvix

      yesterday at 10:01 PM

      Dollar value is not the point. For the US MIC this matters a lot. There are not really any ready replacements for some vital weapons components at a time when US weapons stockpiles have been heavily depleted.

      • potato3732842

        today at 12:25 AM

        If we really needed them they'd cut through the red tape and mine them here, clean water act, screeching idiots, NIMBYs, everything else be damned.

      • kapone

        yesterday at 11:16 PM

        So, we’ll pay more and still get them. You think China is the only one that can game the system?

        Who’s got the money?

        • tmnvix

          today at 12:08 AM

          The usual solutions - money and violence - are not applicable here. China doesn't need the money and can't be bullied. Sources other than China are not going to cut it in the short and mid term. This is a geopolitical nightmare for the US and deserves more media attention.

          • mgh95

            today at 12:55 AM

            There is a new facility coming online from MP Materials (see https://fortworthreport.org/mp-materials-awarded-58-5-millio...) later this year that serves dual purpose customers (GM and the US gov)

    • thaumasiotes

      yesterday at 11:00 PM

      > The main reason that it's mostly China producing them may simply be due to the fact that the volumes are so small that building your own industry is not really worth it.

      There's also an element of their production generating pollution and us preferring to think of ourselves as cleaner than that. We only use the rare earths.

      Compare how desalinization is very cheap, but California prefers constant screaming about drought.

• bpye

  today at 7:45 AM

  This seems similar to the UK government taking control, though not ownership, of British Steel earlier in the year [0] as the Chinese owner was expected to shut down their blast furnaces, an action that could not be easily reversed - if possible at all. One difference is that the UK government rushed through new legislation [1] to allow this, vs the Dutch government using powers they have had for decades.

  [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y66y40kgpo

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Industry_(Special_Measur...

• nonethewiser

  yesterday at 7:40 PM

  So what just happened logistically?

  I assume this is an entirely independent Chinese company without some Dutch sponsor or something. That conforms to local regulations. But now The Dutch government says "we have this new power over you" and that is that. With the consequence presumably being export control on dutch tech, banning from their market, etc? Or were there any more hooks planted that make it easier to force compliance? For example -- and I assume this is not the case in the Netherlands -- in China there is a 51% ownership of the foreign company by a local company (which is more or less state controlled).

  • Denvercoder9

    yesterday at 8:34 PM

    > I assume this is an entirely independent Chinese company without some Dutch sponsor or something.

    It's not, it's a Dutch company, formed according to Dutch law, with headquarters in the Netherlands, that was bought by another Chinese company a few years ago.

    Dutch law sets rules on how any company, but especially public companies (so-called naamloze vennootschappen) must be governed. Even if you own all the shares, by law you don't have unlimited and unchecked power in the company, you have to abide by governance rules.

    Seemingly simultaneously with the government order, a suit was brought to the court enforcing these laws (the Ondernemingskamer) alledging that the CEO and owner were not abiding by them. The court documents are a bit weird to me as a non-lawyer, with Nexperia named as both plaintiff and defendant, so I'm not sure who brought it, but it might've been the government, who are named as a party.

    The court agreed that the suit could have merit, and as an interim measure while the legal proceedings play out, has suspended the CEO and named a temporary director. It also suspended the authority of the owners over their shares (except for one), and assigned a trustee to manage them temporarily. The court did not actually rule on the contents of the suit yet, it only issued interim conservatory measures. We'll likely hear more about how the suit plays out over the next few months.

    An interesting matter of contention in the suit is that the CEO/owner want the CLO to be suspended, while the other side asks the court to prohibit firing of the CLO. I presume there has been a conflict in the board, either leading to or caused by the government order.

    The court documents are public by the way (in Dutch, obviously): https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/resultaat?zoekterm=nexperi...

    • consp

      yesterday at 9:23 PM

      Sounds like the OR (ondernemingsraad) apparently wants to get rid of the CEO for incompetence which is very interesting. It is extremely hard to prove (in a court of law) but a valid reason. I assume they were doing all kind of shady things if they go that route. (Havent read the Court Docs, it is a guess)

      OR vs CEO also explains the duplicate entries as they are both representatives of the company.

    • niels8472

      yesterday at 9:10 PM

      From what I've read it was the company's own board that asked for the ceo (Wing) to be removed.

    • ctenb

      today at 7:46 AM

      What is a CLO?

  • q3k

    yesterday at 7:43 PM

    > I assume this is an entirely independent Chinese company.

    It's worth noting that Nexperia is a spin-off of NXP (Dutch company) which itself is a spin-off of Philips' (Dutch company) semiconductor division.

    It's also worth noting that Nexperia's Chinese owners (Wingtech) are at least partially state controlled.

    • khuey

      yesterday at 9:14 PM

      Nexperia was also spun off to placate Chinese regulators back when Qualcomm wanted to acquire NXP, and then after the spin off the Chinese regulators still refused to approve the acquisition.

      • galangalalgol

        yesterday at 9:53 PM

        Does that mean teensy mcu are now chinese owned? That was one of the last non chinese mcu available.

        • nudgeee

          yesterday at 10:21 PM

          Teensy is based on iMXRT which are NXP, not Nexperia.

    • teekert

      yesterday at 8:04 PM

      Perhaps also worth noting that ASML is also a spin-off of Philips.

      • jacquesm

        yesterday at 9:02 PM

        And that the two collaborate closely on all kinds of projects, and that NXP (the former owner of the business unit that became Nexperia) and Nexperia (the company that is the focus of this action) are both customers of ASML.

• rzerowan

  yesterday at 8:37 AM

  Maybe pressure from the US gov? As a negotiatingtactic vs China - remeber the moves against MotorSich in Ukraine some years back , where the deal was win-win for both but Washington put the kibosh on it and ultimately got destroyed by Russian offensive. Since the speed/urgency and unusual application of the law as you mention , mean extraodinary actions must have quite extraordinary causes. In any case still too many unknowns in the story , hopefully clarity ensues soonest.

  • Doxin

    yesterday at 12:13 PM

    Believe it or not, but the dutch government has agency. It's not impossible for US pressure to be a factor, but I think it's more likely the management of the company was planning to move production to china or something like that. That'd (rightly!) spook the government into some quick action, especially given the political climate around Russia seemingly not being content with having their war confined to Ukraine.

    Unfortunately we seem to be living in interesting times.

    • dragonelite

      yesterday at 8:03 PM

      The US has immense pressure on the dutch government, given their control over ASML . Its US big tech and semi design studios that determines who will need to buy EUV from ASML. Given ASML is not allowed to do business with China, Russia etc.

      • fwipsy

        yesterday at 9:59 PM

        You could just add easily argue that the Dutch government has immense leverage over the US, since ASML controls the leading edge fab technology that underpins Nvidia etc. It seems more to me like a highly profitable partnership that neither side can credibly threaten to withdraw from.

        • tick_tock_tick

          today at 8:11 AM

          > You could just add easily argue that the Dutch government has immense leverage over the US, since ASML controls the

          Not really since the USA basically controls ASML. That's not even counting the USA's control over most of Europe especially the Netherlands.

        • markus_zhang

          today at 3:04 AM

          Although without any proof, but the Cold War history convinces me that US usually has the better hands when dealing with EU. US has the bigger and better sticks.

      • sgt101

        yesterday at 9:02 PM

        Where else will they buy EUV from?

    • echelon

      yesterday at 8:12 PM

      > Unfortunately we seem to be living in interesting times.

      China played a remarkably smart game. We let it happen.

      People have been telling us for twenty years that this would happen and nobody listened until it was almost too late.

      • bigbadfeline

        yesterday at 8:41 PM

        Either way, it cannot be stopped, China will develop independent technology sector because they can and they have no other choice. They don't trust the West and cases like this make such attitude understandable.

        As soon as China tries to compete with the rich monopolies, the "free market" goes out of the window and becomes "free to do as we tell you".

        • thewebguyd

          yesterday at 8:54 PM

          > As soon as China tries to compete with the rich monopolies, the "free market" goes out of the window and becomes "free to do as we tell you".

          Hence big tech cozying up to this administration, and all the attempts to ban AI regulation.

          China won already, US is just trying to stop the bleeding

        • corimaith

          yesterday at 9:22 PM

          >As soon as China tries to compete with the rich monopolies, the "free market" goes out of the window and becomes "free to do as we tell you".

          When China cannot compete with incumbents those protections also go up and when they can now people like you appeal to free trade (while ignoring existing protections). You are being overly charitable to one side here. Which is it? Free trade or Protectionism?

          • DaSHacka

            today at 1:26 AM

            Of course its protectionism for China, so they can bolster their own economy, but free trade for the US, so they can bleed us dry.

          • vachina

            today at 1:12 AM

            A big distinction is the Chinese do not meddle with affairs outside their borders.

            • yuye

              today at 9:59 AM

              China definitely meddles with the affairs of other countries. The belt and road initiative, for example. It's taking some pages out of Europe's old colonial playbook.

              And let's not even start about Taiwan...

            • LunaSea

              today at 5:50 AM

              They do, all the time. Price dumping is one example.

              Industrial and scientific espionage is another one.

              Hacking companies is one more.

              • vachina

                today at 5:57 AM

                I don’t think those count as meddling with affairs. Those are like, daily business for an average American company.

                • LunaSea

                  today at 7:06 AM

                  Can you show me a few examples of American companies hacking Chinese companies?

          • bigbadfeline

            today at 2:47 AM

            > can now people like you appeal to free trade

            You're assuming too much and, along with others here, acting like you've been hurt. "Free trade" is the mantra of Western economists and politicians since the time of Adam Smith, and it's been a ruse since then too. Read him.

            > When China cannot compete with incumbents those protections also go up.

            They do, but not in the erratic manner, levels or timing we're observing here. China is a party of the WTO and they haven't broken any of its agreements, nor have they used any of its emergency clauses.

            > You are being overly charitable to one side here. Which is it? Free trade or Protectionism?

            It's not either/or. I can tell you a third option that is worse than both of these - it's jumping from one to the other and back in an erratic manner as we are doing it now.

            I could tell you something that's better than all of these too but I won't do it. I've been talking about it for many years, primarily as an alternative to free trade and I'm amazed that at this time, nobody seems to be aware of it. Like, what's the point of pointing out obvious truths over and over again with the same (lack of) result.

    • mytailorisrich

      yesterday at 8:45 PM

      Ultimately the Dutch, like for instance the Australians, are a rounding error compared to China and a pawn in a bigger game. At least the Dutch can "hide" behind the EU.

      So there will noise but this won't stop China' rise and it won't stop Europe's decline, either.

• BartjeD

  today at 7:48 AM

  The company was warned multiple times prior to this happening, to adjust course. They didn't. Now they got into hot water and claim they were unjustly nationalized.

  They can have their day in an impartial court of law. If they're right they will prevail.

  • pembrook

    today at 7:51 AM

    Warned multiple times over what exactly?

• mmarq

  today at 5:53 AM

  We have a similar law in Italy, but, not having much advanced technology foreigners are willing to buy, the government uses it to prevent foreigners from buying washing machine manufacturers.

• WhyNotHugo

  today at 3:10 AM

  The Goods Availability Act invoked in this case, grants power to requisition goods in case of emergency situations, and owners must be compensated.

  What I don't see in the official announcement is the nature of the emergency in this case.

  Ref: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0002098/2021-07-01/

• trymas

  today at 6:09 AM

  > "knowledge leak" (w/e that means exactly)

  At least in my tongue - this would mean “brain drain”.

• miohtama

  yesterday at 8:37 PM

  Could be worse. Could be TikTok and threat to national security.

• NicoJuicy

  yesterday at 7:54 PM

  Germany implemented something similar like this after China took over Kuka (industry leading robotics) and practically build an entire industry of robotics in China after that.

  And of course, the jobs disappeared from Germany.

  • q3k

    yesterday at 8:00 PM

    Did they? As far as I know Kuka is still fully controlled by Midea.

    • NicoJuicy

      yesterday at 8:28 PM

      The regulation was created after that

  • em-bee

    yesterday at 8:43 PM

    the jobs didn't disappear (yet). they grew from 13.000 in 2014 before midea took over to 15.000 in 2024. maybe they could have grown more in germany if midea hadn't taken over. who knows.

    • NicoJuicy

      yesterday at 9:38 PM

      There are only about 3200 jobs in Augsburg (Germany), it's HQ?

      https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/KUKA-AG-436260/ne...

      Note: Looking for more information about the distribution of jobs atm ( countries). But it's hard to find. Any resources?

      But you're right. They still have jobs there, I didn't knew that.

      Note: This is about the law Germany created afterwards: https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/germany-tightens...

      • em-bee

        yesterday at 11:06 PM

        well, the real question is, are those 15.000 employees in germany? and were they in germany before? i just found the number on wikipedia, but now i looked up the 2024 report that says that 4600 are in germany, and 10600 are outside. in the 2014 report it says 4700 are in germany, 4500 rest of europe, 1700 north america, and 1100 elsewhere. so it doesn't look like any jobs were moved.

• javiramos

  yesterday at 8:42 PM

  nincompoops... learned a new word today

  • ChrisMarshallNY

    yesterday at 8:55 PM

    It has an interesting etymology: https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2014/09/words-...

• 1oooqooq

  yesterday at 10:33 PM

  thanks for the context.

  any idea what we the rationale/reason to pass that law in the first place? any specific endangered war resource at the time?

• HSO

  yesterday at 8:45 PM

  [flagged]

  • maxdo

    yesterday at 9:05 PM

    EU and west finally TRYING to protect their market the way China is doing it all the time. They tax, ban, espionage everything beneficial to their society.

    China would do it without a blink.

    • markus_zhang

      yesterday at 9:36 PM

      Well if I'm from EU and if I know my government doesn't do espionage and all sorts of nasty things, I'd really be very worried. They (the government and its agencies) are supposed to do the nasty jobs, and it is very incompetent if they don't do so.

    • gnulinux996

      yesterday at 10:29 PM

      The West has not been trying to protect their market? What do you thing those wars have been all about?

      Freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

    • hshdhdhj4444

      yesterday at 9:42 PM

      “Protect their market” - And yet the U.S. and Europe are richer than ever.

      It’s hilarious seeing the US oligarchs distracting from the fact that they’ve transferred massive amounts of wealth from the broader society to themselves by blaming every one else.

      There is a fair argument to protect strategic industries and actions like these are probably needed, but let’s not pretend the “markets” are at risk because of anything China is doing, which is essentially giving Americans and Europeans actual stuff in return for pieces of paper.

      • tw04

        yesterday at 10:40 PM

        If you think the west will remain the dominant force it has been without access to superior technology in business and metallurgy in military and manufacturing, I’d like some of what you’re smoking

    • yunesj

      today at 12:59 AM

      China liberalized their economy to compete with Western economies, showing their leaders don’t really believe in communism.

      And the US and Europe are moving towards command economies to keep up with China, showing their politicians don’t really believe in liberalism.

      • mk89

        today at 8:46 AM

        Liberalized? You mean "you can come here as long as I can copy/paste your products and push you out of business"?

        That's what liberal economies are about, right. :)

    • protocolture

      yesterday at 9:45 PM

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93Timor-Leste_...

      Uh, you gotta understand that China has never been alone.

    • mk89

      yesterday at 9:07 PM

      They would, they do and they did it. But we called them communists for doing so. ;)

      • maxdo

        yesterday at 9:17 PM

        communism is actually exactly the opposite of that. this is rutheless capitalism 101 from china vs religious left/right fights of the west boosted by not in my backyard individualism.

        West lived for too long for too good, to start believe that they can do whatever, and live good.

        • DaSHacka

          today at 1:30 AM

          Good times (60's economy) create weak men (boomers). Weak men create hard times (offshoring everything to china)

          Time to see if hard times will make strong men.

      • rbanffy

        yesterday at 9:20 PM

        Comrade Karremans it is then…

      • reliabilityguy

        yesterday at 9:37 PM

        > But we called them communists for doing so. ;)

        What?

        They view themselves as communists. Moreover, all these policies have nothing to do with communism.

      • corimaith

        yesterday at 9:16 PM

        Economic Nationalism is not Communism by any sense. Nor is responding to mercantilism.

        But the CCP explicitly considers themselves Marxism-Leninism with and their internal beliefs and government structure is structurally follows that.

        We consider them Communists and they consider themselves Communist. They do not consider us Communist and we don't either.

        You're trying to create a false conflation here and stir division. I'm interested in whose interests comments like yours really reflect. It's certainly not the truth.

        • HSO

          yesterday at 9:37 PM

          > the CCP explicitly considers themselves Marxism-Leninism with and their internal beliefs and government structure is structurally follows that.

          > they consider themselves Communist. They do not consider us Communist.

          And you know all this because of your deep study, in the original language of course, of the CPC, their internal factions, and the collected writings in their leading policy journals, I assume, yes?

          Or dare I even ask did you get this from some 250 word limit editorial in the "wall street journal"?

          • mgh95

            yesterday at 10:48 PM

            > And you know all this because of your deep study, in the original language of course, of the CPC, their internal factions, and the collected writings in their leading policy journals, I assume, yes?

            Perhaps not original language, but per Qiushi, the CPCs theoretical journal on their ideology, an official[translation of a speech by Xi Xinping](https://en.qstheory.cn/2025-07/28/c_1110292.htm):

            > Marxist ideas and theories are wide-ranging and profound and maintain relevance through constant study. In the new era, we Chinese Communists still need to study Karl Marx, study and practice Marxism, and continually draw on its powerful knowledge and theories. In this way, we will uphold and develop Chinese socialism in the new era with more resolve, confidence and wisdom. It will support the coordinated advance of the Five-sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-pronged Comprehensive Strategy and ensure that we always stay the course towards national rejuvenation as we break the waves and sail ahead.

            If it says its a duck...

        • mk89

          yesterday at 9:52 PM

          You can call it Economic nationalism all you want, but these are similar principles that were applied in authoritarian states like in Fascist/Nazi times.

          I don't care if they are Communists - we call them like that to say "they're authoritarian", however, we're failing to see where we (West) are getting. In order to "defend" our democracy we're becoming increasingly like them.

          To think that all that it takes would be to change our lifestyle NOT to buy anymore 5 pairs of low quality shoes per year or so, but 1 or 2 good ones, maybe made by your neighbour. Which is exactly how I grew up with, until someone told us that we need to buy a load of cheap crap, otherwise you're not cool.

          • mgh95

            yesterday at 10:05 PM

            > You can call it Economic nationalism all you want, but these are similar principles that were applied in authoritarian states like in Fascist/Nazi times.

            Simply because economic nationalism is a characteristic of authoritarian state and has been a characteristic of fascist (Italian fascism, especially) and Nazis does not imply economic nationalism is intrinsically authoritarian fascist.

            America for much of its history was protectionist. Europe remains a bloc intended to protect local industries characteristic of national identity, for example the rejection of Mercosur by the French. India seeks to grow its domestic titans and shut out foreign firms while purchasing abroad through activities such as the ArcelorMittal acquisition.

            Economic nationalism is very much its own independent theme.

      • Sammi

        yesterday at 9:40 PM

        You're not a murderer for killing in self defence. You are allowed to defend yourself.

        • mk89

          yesterday at 9:51 PM

          Yeah, the next step is to actually think "they are all potential enemies, we should produce here and be independent, so in case there is a war we can make it". Autarky is how Fascism began.

          • tmnvix

            yesterday at 9:58 PM

            "Super Sparta"

  • yoavm

    yesterday at 9:06 PM

    So what exactly are you learning in this case from the actions, the data, the private citizens or the scholars, that is so different from "Western" explanations?

    • HSO

      yesterday at 9:27 PM

      [flagged]

      • jasonwatkinspdx

        yesterday at 10:12 PM

        Do you have anything to say that isn't childish spleen venting?

      • reliabilityguy

        yesterday at 9:46 PM

        > As soon as it gets inconvenient or the table is turned, they are dropped like a hot potato.

        I am confused. Are non-“western” stars/nations better in this regard? I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say.

        • xboxnolifes

          yesterday at 9:55 PM

          It doesn't matter if they are better or worse. Your own principles should not be things that shift based on what somebody else does.

          • bfg_9k

            yesterday at 10:12 PM

            Principles don't exist in a vacuum. When viewing someone else, you only consider them 'principled' because of the context they exist in.

            In a world where everyone donates 50% of their pay check to charity, the person who donates 25% is considered selfish.

          • reliabilityguy

            today at 12:00 AM

            I asked OP the question about their comment, and not about whether principles should do this or that.

            That being said I do not believe in absolutes. One example why such an absolutist approach fails is the tolerance of intolerant, which in itself makes the whole society intolerant, and fails to uphold the absolute principle of tolerance.

      • markus_zhang

        yesterday at 9:35 PM

        I think that's fine. High politics is always very nasty, and any written contracts are supposed to be teared apart. I think the elites of whatever countries are mature enough to eat it.

        Regarding us, the human resources, it is irrelevant however we think.

  • lstodd

    yesterday at 9:09 PM

    Yes, Fourier Transform never lies when you get it right. :-/s

    • HSO

      yesterday at 9:23 PM

      Touché :)

  • ahartmetz

    yesterday at 10:24 PM

    Oh please take that crackpot stuff to 4chan or something.

    I can read about both sides of the Gaza conflict just fine in evil Western media. It is quite plain to see (read) that Israel is doing some really bad shit there after an, in the grand scheme of things, "less bad" attack on itself. About the pandemic... yes, mistakes were made. There was a dangerous situation and no one was really sure what to do. It's like some people realized for the first time that the government has power and that it isn't always acting in the way they'd prefer. Big fucking deal. I guess a lot of people didn't really understand how the world around them is structured before it bit them in the ass. It's not that bad though, compared to other places and times in the world.

    • b59831

      yesterday at 10:30 PM

      [dead]

  • mk89

    yesterday at 9:05 PM

    > inferiority complex about China.

    That's not some s** that someone made up. They/We created an unstoppable beast. They thought that China would be like India or Vietnam or so. Nope.

    You name it, they build it.

    We can only "regulate" it - see what Europe has come up with to justify it - with the CO2 nonsense, "human rights" and all that. More regulations are the only way to prevent to get your market over flooded by products that you can't possibly build at that speed and cost (and not necessarily quality, but finally, most of what we use come from there and aren't MacBooks good? or fridges/TVs/phones, etc).

    • yesterday at 9:25 PM

    • mk89

      today at 8:45 AM

      I frankly am not sure why people keep on downvoting this comment without providing a counter argument or whatever. I would like to be contradicted rather than downvoted (that too, if you can take 2 minutes to at least say why).

    • maxdo

      yesterday at 9:11 PM

      That’s a myth. Yes, we allow them to move faster—much faster—but it’s simply because their government is more efficient.

      Western society, in contrast, runs on a kind of religion. People follow a few belief systems: socialism, right-wing conservatism, and perhaps liberalism as a softer sub-flavor.

      Here’s the fun part: China learned the hard way that no single dogma—whether communism or anything else—is worth worshiping if it leaves people hungry. They’ve mixed communism, socialism, and raw capitalism, using whatever tools best serve their progress. Ruthless goal achievement.

      Meanwhile, Western society has turned the left-versus-right divide into something resembling the conflict between major branches of Islam—where factions despise and fight each other. It’s extremely foolish.

      It's soolish, like any blind reglion following. And yeah, with this divide we have, we all become religios == stupid.

      • mk89

        yesterday at 9:22 PM

        It's not a myth - China wouldn't be in this situation without Nike/etc. going there in the 80's to "reduce" costs (to actually increase their profits). That triggered the whole chain. They thought they could just jump ship when the prices would increase, but what they didn't expect was that they had a guy that instead of getting just fatter and fatter (like many leaders in the world who finally become corrupt etc) actually had a vision for his country, and it's working out. It's the best implementation of the boiling frog metaphor.

        About the rest of the post - I would say it's a bit more complicated than just black or white.

        • RealityVoid

          yesterday at 9:43 PM

          > About the rest of the post - I would say it's a bit more complicated than just black or white.

          Yes, I think that was his point as well. Policy is a set of tools, and depending on the current state of the system there is a right tool for the the job,with, of course, a set of tradeoffs. Discarding tools "of the right" or "of the left" is foolish.

• emmelaich

  yesterday at 11:50 PM

  It's a bit pathetic that European countries do not have the tech capacity to compete equally without having to do stuff like this.

  (Not saying China is playing fair btw, just saying there's a vast amount of underused intellectual resources in Europe.)

  • Doxin

    today at 9:13 AM

    You do realize this is china trying to abscond with European tech? Not the other way around?

As long as western companies cannot freely buy companies in China the reverse shouldn't be possible, too.

Business with dictatorships must stop as soon as possible. In fact it should be forbidden. Nothing good comes out of that. I hope we will see more moves like this from democratic governments.

• mtrovo

  today at 9:22 AM

  While I share the sentiment expressed, I highly doubt the general public would be as supportive if the roles were reversed, like if a 3rd world country attempted to nationalize an investment from a Western nation, particularly given the history of numerous nationalization attempts in Latin America with very public Western involvement in coups.

  • quitit

    today at 9:43 AM

    I think they're difficult to compare.

    The western companies aren't using the business as a strategic tool to destabilise the host country. While nationalising something like an oil company is only about changing where profits are sent.

  • ragebol

    today at 9:43 AM

    They're not nationalizing though

• flumpcakes

  today at 8:49 AM

  I agree with you, unfortunately the west does a lot of business with dictatorships as they are oil rich or China.

• crossroadsguy

  today at 8:37 AM

  You do realise USA is not the sole beneficiary of global destabilisations and installing of puppet regimes and overthrowing, et cetera. The West in general has been. USA, as the tip of the spear, is seen first, if not as the tip of the iceberg :)

  So you see, such businesses have been quite fruitful for the resources the West has gulped over the years.

Time to quote one of my favourite lines in the Godfather franchise. Probably totally unrelated.

“We gladly put you at the helm of our little fleet, but our ships must all sail in the same direction. Otherwise, who can say how long your stay with us will last. It's not personal, it's only business. You should know, Godfather”

— The late venerable Don Lucchesi

• dcrazy

  yesterday at 8:54 PM

  I couldn’t place this quote, so I googled it and learned it’s from Godfather Part 3. Bold choice to take your favorite quote from that particular movie. :)

  • mmaunder

    yesterday at 8:59 PM

    Oh lord no. Pacino’s Scream made acting history and is of the finest scenes to come out of the Strasberg acting ecosystem. Critics gonna crit, but there are some remarkably good things about that film.

    • markus_zhang

      today at 12:54 AM

      Godfather 3 is actually my favorite Godfather movie.

      It detours from the mafia line of story and instead dives into the darker maelstrom of high politics.

      It is from this movie that I learned about Michele Sindona, about Propaganda Due, and in large gained an undying interest in Cold War and geopolitics. Of course I'm just an amateur who only knows English, Mandarin and a bit of French (for Cold War study I'd say all major EU languages are important), and too much source material was buried in history, awaiting for all relevant parties to die so that it has a chance to go into daylight again.

  • markus_zhang

    yesterday at 9:29 PM

    Yeah there are so many memorable quotes.

Europe's projected semiconductor manufacturing equipment expenditure from 2026-2028 is a rounding error.

Global expenditure on 300mm fab equipment from 2026-2028 is predicted to be USD$374bn with regional breakdown as follows (totaling 100%):

China - USD$95bn (25%)

South Korea - USD$86bn (23%)

Taiwan - USD$75bn (20%)

Americas - USD$60bn (16%)

Japan - USD$32bn (9%)

Europe and Middle East - USD$14bn (4%)

Southeast Asia - USD$12bn (3%)

[1] https://www.semi.org/en/semi-press-release/semi-reports-glob...

• motoboi

  today at 2:02 AM

  yeah, but those machines are built in Europe. Most in Netherlands to be exact, but Holand too.

  • 55873445216111

    today at 2:26 AM

    Netherlands AND Holland? Isn't that the same place?

    Also: Even while ASML steppers are built in Netherlands, there are a lot of other non-photolithography tools needed to build a fab in addition to the ASML tools.

    • magicalhippo

      today at 2:41 AM

      > Netherlands AND Holland? Isn't that the same place?

      Holland is part of the Netherlands. Not unlike how say Texas is part of the United States.

      So in that regard the statement was redundant, yes.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland

      • vincentkriek

        today at 6:30 AM

        And ASML is not in Holland, nor is Nexperia or ASMI. I can't think of any semiconductor business in "Holland".

        • skrebbel

          today at 8:21 AM

          ASML has offices in Delft, so in proper HN Standard Pedantic Form: Well, actually there is!

        • today at 8:16 AM

  • buyucu

    today at 6:49 AM

    Nor for long. If the Chinese didn't already have incentives to break ASML's monopoly, they do now.

    • Tade0

      today at 7:54 AM

      There's more to that than just ASML, as that company in turn uses specialty lenses produced by Zeiss. Additionally there's crucial American IP (I don't recall what specifically) that goes into those machines, so advanced semiconductor production is more of a global effort really.

      Meanwhile China is trying to do all that domestically. They might even pull this off, but just like with their 7nm tech, they're unlikely to be able to do this economically.

      • skrebbel

        today at 8:20 AM

        > (I don't recall what specifically)

        I believe it's the lightsource, made by Cymer of San Diego before ASML took them over.

I don't understand why this suddenly happened (except if asked by the USG in response to the recent scare/reality over rare earths).

The 50% ownership by a sanctioned entity was a reality for a while, and was an issue as soon as the purchase. This didn't change recently. So, this action should have been part of the pre-purchase review (CFIUS in the US...I assume there is an equivalent in China). On the face of it, this all could have been avoided by having a non-sanctioned entity (including another random Chinese company) own enough of the company to get sanctioned entity ownership below 50%.

• tnt128

  yesterday at 8:38 PM

  Negotiation leverage. Had they prevent the purchase in the first place, they won’t have anythings to negotiate now.

  • markus_zhang

    today at 1:30 AM

    Probably the case. The Chinese probably knew about this too and willingly came forward.

• bsder

  yesterday at 10:55 PM

  > I don't understand why this suddenly happened

  I could easily see Nexperia chips appearing in Russian munitions in Ukraine setting this off.

  It would also match charging the CEO with "incompetence". It would be pretty easy to win that in court if the chips are appearing in Russian weaponry.

• throwaway-0001

  today at 5:11 AM

  Us placed parent company Wingtech on US Entity List before. Then us probably forced Netherlands to do this.

  China bans rare earths, us forces eu to be against China.

  So I’d expect more escalations from China.

  • thomasdeleeuw

    today at 5:41 AM

    Definitely US pressure. NL is always eager to get on the good side of the US, even if they get nothing in return. For example participation in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza today.

I don't know if something similar was feared, but I would like to remind people of what happened in 2020 with China and ARM.

You don't get into the China market without losing control.

• aurareturn

  today at 5:00 AM

  Which came from the US sanctioning Huawei because Huawei was making better chips than Qualcomm and Cisco.

  US was posturing to ban China access to Arm. Ultimately, it led to a ban on using TSMC for Chinese companies instead. There is no real justification to do a blanket ban on all Chinese companies except a state-sponsored way to to slow China down in AI race.

• bgnn

  today at 5:48 AM

  Can't you say the same for the West though? This news is about a Chinese company's control being taking over by a Western government.

  • mk89

    today at 7:23 AM

    In no way this is comparable, come on.

    When you run your business in China, China runs the copy of your business for you ;)

    I do understand that we want to try to see "the same" in the stupidity of our politicians that let all of this happen just like that for many years, but we are different.

• like_any_other

  yesterday at 11:01 PM

  It must have slipped by me at the time - what happened with China and ARM?

  • devnullbrain

    today at 12:18 AM

    The Arm China CEO went rogue and spun it off as its own company. ARM HQ were unable to fire him, as he had physical possession of the company's seal stamp. Reading between the lines, the Chinese government chose not to intervene for multiple years.

    • contrarian1234

      today at 5:53 AM

      This stuff constantly happens to foreigners in China and just seems to be mostly due to having bad local legal teams. If your CEO can run off with the company stamps and screw you over.. then it just sounds like amateur hour and you have no idea what you're doing.

      The legal system there is fundamentally very bureaucratic - there are rules, but they're very different from the West. You need local help - and a lot of it. You see similar bureaucratic insanity in Japan, though I'm guessing there is just a lot more legal infrastructure for guiding foreign companies there.

      • devnullbrain

        today at 8:20 AM

        If it’s constantly happening, does that sound like an attractive market to work in? I’m very open to the idea of companies screwing up, but day-to-day operations shouldn’t look Kafkaesque.

      • mk89

        today at 7:25 AM

        So you're saying that ARM just went there to open an office without knowing what they're doing?

        We're talking about the same ARM...?

I'm currently blazing through "Chip War" and can't put it down. This news is fascinating in that context. I highly recommend the book to anyone who hasn't read it.

• hermitcrab

  yesterday at 11:26 PM

  I read it recently. I thought it was going to be a bit dry and heavy going. But it was a really good read.

  TIL Shockley, one of the original pioneers of semi-conductors and Nobel prize winner, was a total shit. His staff hated him so much that the key players left and started a new company (Fairchild). He later became a eugenics crank.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

Related, the announcement of the Dutch government: https://www.government.nl/latest/news/2025/10/12/minister-of...

A bit of history:

Nexperia was formed because back in 2017 (if I remember correctly) Qualcomm wanted to buy NXP. So NXP wanted to look more attractive to Qualcomm shareholders and sold its more low-tech business unit to Chinese investors. That acquisition didn't go through because of the tensions between US and China during the first Trump admin.

NXP has been trimming fat since its formation from Philips Semiconductors and American or Chinese companies are buying whatever business unit they can grab. They pretty much buy it for the IP and the customers. Once they get the IP they usually fore the whole team and shut dient operations in NL.

Nexperia wasn't doing this though. They had no interesting technology to steal oe transfer to China to begin with.

• user_7832

  today at 5:07 AM

  > NXP has been trimming fat since its formation from Philips Semiconductors

  Honestly it appears to me that Philips themselves have just been losing talent/marketshare/I'm not even sure what, causing their gradual decline. The Philips I grew up with was an electronics powerhouse. Today apart, from their healthcare department (and maybe their slightly overpriced lighting department via Signifify), they don't seem to be very "active", and that makes me sad.

  • skrebbel

    today at 8:31 AM

    This has been going on for decades.

    I once did a brief consulting stint at what was then considered one of the most innovative, startuppy departments of Philips Healthcare, and it was by far the slowest-moving, least productive software team I've ever seen.

    They had just "ended a sprint" when I came in, and 3 months later they still hadn't started another. People were just fooling around. There was a rule that talking about work during lunch was a no-no (so we talked about hockey and babies, the only subjects that 2+ people had in common). Testers were a separate team, and they refused to test things, no matter how small, without being allocated months of dedicated time to first make a detailed 50-page docx "test scenario". The mini product I was assigned to work on took 3 months to complete but the 5-page spec had been argued over for the past 18 months and signed off by, in total, 8 managers and 6 directors. I was the only person shipping anything of actual business value during that period (not because I'm so great, just because I was the only one asked to do anything of business value).

    This is now a decade and a half ago. With the series of number-crunching Excel MBAs leading Philips since then I quite doubt that this will have changed for the better.

Would be interested to hear some details on this from someone within Nexperia (or the automotive customers it supplied), if anyone is here on HN

That governmental decision was surely not taken lightly, it's a significant move with high risk of increasing geopolitical tension...

• jacquesm

  yesterday at 8:23 AM

  That will not happen. But yes, you are right that this decision was not taken lightly, I've only heard of one other such move in the last 50 years or so.

  The Chinese propaganda machine is already making lots of waves about how NL is no longer a democracy and how this dings NL reputation abroad.

  The Dutch have put restrictions on Wingtech to not make certain changes (sale or move of assets, intellectual property, company activities, employees) for a year. That should give you enough to chew on I think (and it is public knowledge). Specifically the IP and assets bits are in focus here, more so because the parent company is on a watchlist. Note that they not only kicked out the CEO - which in itself is an earth shaking move for a company this big - they also took control over the shares.

  • yesterday at 2:46 PM

I'm not seeing any mention of the Entity List ITT, which seems like the real reason. Via SCMP:

>Some analysts said the move by the Dutch ministry resulted from a new rule issued by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, the agency responsible for export control policies. The rule, effective September 29, imposed new restrictions on entities which are at least 50 per cent owned by enterprises on the Entity List or the Military End-User List – two blacklists issued by the US government.

Also real kicker from 2022:

The UK used its National Security & Investment Act (2021) to order divestment of Nexperia’s Newport Wafer Fab in Nov 2022. The UK ordered them to sell 86% of the stake due to National Security concerns

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/acquisition-of-ne...

• masfuerte

  yesterday at 9:16 PM

  There was also some drama around British Steel back in April with the government seizing control from China:

  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg17g39x41o

  • lawlessone

    yesterday at 9:49 PM

    afaik there was the added danger there that if the blast furnaces are turned off its very difficult /impossible to start them again.

The title is misleading. The Dutch government says it can now reverse or hold back decisions made within the company if they are deemed damaging to the Dutch or European production. I assume the law is written in a way that allows the government to only intervene if it is for such things. A judge would ultimately decide whether it is, if it gets to that point.

I wouldn't call that "taking control" necessarily. Taking "some" control maybe. But in a reasonable way.

• mk89

  today at 6:29 AM

  > Wingtech Chairman Zhang Xuezheng had been immediately suspended from his roles as executive director of Nexperia Holdings and nonexecutive director of Nexperia after the ministerial order, according to the filing.

  Not sure what firing the boss is, if not taking control...

  • bux93

    today at 8:33 AM

    Firing a company's boss and appointing a trustee is uncommon, but it happens.

    E.g. at IT service provider Centric, where the majority owner and CEO had a mental breakdown. Employees suffered from his delusions, but it also threatened to affect customers. The trustees aren't government agents, they just run the business as a going concern, minus the mismanagement (in this case, minus the mental illness).

    US law also provides for a CEO to be ousted and a trustee to be appointed in cases of mismanagement or fraud. I wouldn't call that taking control, in much the same way as bankruptcy proceedings appointing a trustee don't amount to government taking control.

    Now, the article refers to a filing made by former management. That filing is conflating the order and the firing of the CEO. The ministerial order didn't fire the CEO, that was a separate action filed by the company's works council and happened before the order was issued. The reason for the firing lies mostly in mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

    The ministerial order is much more limited in scope, allowing the government to roll back decisions detrimental to the company - especially transfers of assets.

    It's a shame that CNBC is just parroting the former management's objections, rather than you know, doing any reporting.

    In both the order and the legal case, it's clear the ownership/management wanted to shut down the company and take the assets. The company was also not doing OK financially, and this kind of thing reeks of bankruptcy fraud (i.e. fraudulent conveyance).

    The kind of tech nexperia makes isn't rocket science but I could imagine they produce some chips that are used in essential supply chains. So rather than wait for the bankruptcy and the fraud to happen, the company was restricted from transferring assets.

    So the wording "takes control" is misleading. "subjected to additional oversight" is perhaps too wordy but more accurate. "put on a leash" might be a good way of putting it.

    • mk89

      today at 8:38 AM

      Thanks for doing the work I should have done :D

      That's very helpful.

      EDIT: is this behaviour common with Chinese companies in Europe? Do they buy to lead companies to shutdown?

50 years of sending all the knowledge to China and now sudden realization that „data is the value”. Work was cheap, but we paid in IP and tech as a whole. It’s great to see how long term is China strategy and how well they execute it.

Good luck for us all being „independent”. We can make processors out of attached plastic bottle caps…

• zagfai

  today at 7:52 AM

  And you will find that half of knowledge made by Asian.

• brazukadev

  yesterday at 10:37 PM

  It is funny that there are more people blaming China than the shareholders that made trillions of dollars.

  • curseofcasandra

    today at 8:36 AM

    Easier to blame a foreign villain than to hold the shareholder class accountable.

  • today at 1:21 AM

I smell a loose loose situation ahead. Nexperia will have problems sourcing there materials in the future and Europe will sit on a husk of the former company. China is not unheard of starving things they do not benefit from

alt link https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3328726/ch...

• dang

  yesterday at 7:28 PM

  Thanks, we'll add that to the toptext as well.

Nexperia makes quite a line-up of parts. Huge range of pretty low level things, various logic and bus small devices, mountains of transistors. https://www.mouser.com/manufacturer/nexperia/featured-produc...

They have a not huge but very nice line-up of GaN fet devices too. I'd been looking through their line-up here just lack week!

Just fun to see what's on offer here. I couldn't find a latest listings by manufacturer for Nexperia, which is one of my favorite Mouser views.

so is the company that taken over gonna get compensated or its just nation takeover for free????

• gitaarik

  today at 6:07 AM

  They are not being taken over. The Dutch government says it can now reverse or hold back decisions made within the company if they are deemed damaging to the Dutch or European production. I assume the law is written in a way that allows the government to only intervene if it is for such things. A judge would ultimately decide whether it is, if it gets to that point.

• potato3732842

  today at 12:31 AM

  Even if they get compensated when the .gov buys your stuff it's never a fair price.

This excuse could be used by many countries to seize European companies controlling strategic national resources

• jsiepkes

  yesterday at 7:44 PM

  Let's be real here, a European company wouldn't even have been allowed to buy a Chinese company in China and have the level of control as in this case in the first place.

  • tartoran

    yesterday at 8:00 PM

    This is it pretty much, not sure why it took so long to come to this realization. Was it greed that caused a warp in rational and common sense?

    • stackskipton

      yesterday at 8:50 PM

      Greed. When China was becoming manufacturing powerhouse, it was incredibly cheap, and Chinese government seemed extremely willing to play ball by making sure there was no government caused slowdowns. This obviously worked until it didn't but even now, it's so expensive to change, corporations are screaming about their quarterly stock price and US being so financialized, US in a real gordian knot.

    • q3k

      yesterday at 8:03 PM

      Just the religious belief that The Free Market will solve everything on its own and there should be no attempt to interfere with it.

      • jaccola

        yesterday at 8:28 PM

        I never understood this, I believe very strongly in the free market, but only where there is a free market. Of course you can let the free market run free up to the border of e.g. the US but surely it won't solve international trade since many countries do not have a free market. Unless we agree some international rules such that the boundary of the free market "sandbox" becomes the earths borders.

        It's why I also think it is possible to hold a pro-free-market pro-tariff position simultaneously without contradiction. Tariffs could be used to "level set" manipulation from foreign governments and make the incoming goods behave as if they were not manipulated (thus also reducing the incentive to manipulate in the first place).

        Not sure this is how tariffs are being used in reality.

        • corimaith

          yesterday at 9:41 PM

          You are 100% correct. Free Trade hasn't been disproven, only the inane notion that one should pursue unreciproval free trade with a countries that perform mercantalism against them.

          The consumer isn't everything, the worker does matter just as much.

          • today at 7:25 AM

    • array_key_first

      yesterday at 10:28 PM

      Greed sure, but also optics. In the US at least, we love to condemn China for being "communist" and not a real democracy. Remember, for the US, communist has been the number one enemy for a long time. Obviously, we can't do what they do.

      But we do what they do, and China isn't even communist.

      • skinnymuch

        yesterday at 11:38 PM

        China is communist. Interesting how often outsiders are so sure a country led by the CPC isn’t Marxist.

• justinclift

  yesterday at 12:45 PM

  And it might even be valid too.

• Longlius

  yesterday at 7:55 PM

  And which firms in China are controlled by European entities?

  • evolighting

    today at 1:38 AM

    I don't know what you are talking about

    In China, most locally manufactured brands seem to vanish after roughly two decades — whether in clothing, food, daily necessities, automobiles, or electronics. Yet, global brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, P&G, Unilever, Colgate, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi (collectively known as “BBA” in China), and even Nokia, dominate the market;

    Interestingly, many European companies were eventually overtaken by their American counterparts — Nokia for example.

    We’re not even talking about computers and smartphones—when it comes to these sectors, the U.S. simply won’t allow anyone else to take the lead. The market is dominated almost entirely by just a few platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

  • DiogenesKynikos

    yesterday at 10:25 PM

    European companies have had massive investments in China for decades now.

    Many people in the West have no idea what's going on in China. Western brands and investments are all over the place. Half the cars on the streets used to be European or American (and that has only recently changed, due to the rise of EVs).

    Yet Europeans and Americans often complain, "Why can't Western companies operate in China?" Excuse me?

    • devnullbrain

      today at 12:25 AM

      China's rules, present and historical, on joint ventures and banned investment sectors seem like a conspicuous omission in your comment.

      • DiogenesKynikos

        today at 8:09 AM

        Take a look at DeHo40's comment below. They cover it well.

    • like_any_other

      yesterday at 11:07 PM

      The question was, emphasis mine: "which firms in China are controlled by European entities?"

      Western brands have investments, but are required by law to have a local partner, that learns the trade and eventually copies the product:

      China bars foreign companies from participating on their own in many industries, but in some of those industries foreign companies can participate only by forming a joint venture with a Chinese partner. [..] Partnering with a Chinese business can be tricky for various reasons, so understanding to what you are agreeing is absolutely critical. This is especially true because the Chinese law, the Chinese government, and the Chinese courts will be heavily biased in favor of your joint venture partner in any dispute between your company and your China joint venture partner’s company. - https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/china-joint-venture...

      > Half the cars on the streets used to be European or American

      And more than half the phones in Europe or America are Asian - what's your point?

      • DeH40

        today at 7:16 AM

        That’s a common misconception, but it's factually incorrect. European companies can, and do, acquire and control companies in China.

        The legal framework and the reality on the ground show a very different picture.

        1. The Law Explicitly Allows It: China's Foreign Investment Law (effective since Jan 1, 2020) clearly states that foreign investors are permitted to acquire the shares, equity, or other similar interests of domestic Chinese enterprises.

        2. The "Negative List" System: China uses a "Negative List" model. This means any industry not on the list is fully open to foreign investment, often up to 100% ownership. This list has been shrinking every year, opening up more sectors. For instance, all restrictions in the manufacturing sector were removed. While there are still restrictions in very specific strategic areas (like news media or rare earth mining), this is not a blanket ban by any means.

        3. Real-World Examples of European-Controlled Companies in China:

        You don't have to search hard to find major Chinese operations controlled by European firms. Here are just a few high-profile examples:

        Automotive: German automaker BMW raised its stake in its Chinese joint venture, BMW Brilliance Automotive, to 75%. This is a landmark case of a European company taking majority control of a major automotive manufacturer in China. Similarly, Volkswagen owns a 75% stake in its EV-focused Volkswagen Anhui venture.

        Chemicals: Germany’s BASF is building a massive new Verbund site in Guangdong. It's a €10 billion project that is 100% owned and operated by BASF.

        Retail & Consumer Goods: All IKEA (Sweden) stores in China are operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary. French beauty giant L'Oréal and luxury groups like LVMH and Kering all operate through wholly foreign-owned enterprises in China.

        Finance: German insurer Allianz established Allianz (China) Insurance Holding, the very first 100% foreign-owned insurance holding company in the country.

        So, the idea that a European company "wouldn't be allowed" to buy a Chinese company is a myth. While the process involves regulations (just like any country), it is legally possible and happens frequently across many industries.

      • DiogenesKynikos

        today at 8:12 AM

        > And more than half the phones in Europe or America are Asian - what's your point?

        Actually, the US banned the most successful Chinese phone company the second it started gaining market share. At the time, it was the largest phone brand in Europe.

        But my point is that European and American companies can and do invest and do business in China, on a massive scale.

  • constantcrying

    yesterday at 8:02 PM

    There are many companies which the Chinese government could target in retaliation. In China foreign companies are usually minority partners in some ventures with some Chinese company.

    • yesterday at 8:34 PM

    • klooney

      yesterday at 8:59 PM

      > foreign companies are usually minority partners

      So, uh, none?

• octo888

  yesterday at 7:42 PM

  Let's hope so

The timing is weird, just after Trump's latest escalation with China. Using The Netherlands to fall into the sword would fit with the general tactics of dumping the Ukraine war on the EU and trying to sour their relations with China.

That way, the U.S. is free to control all oil resources in the Middle East and conquer new ones in Venezuela. The EU gets nothing but enemies and higher oil and gas prices.

In principle I'm against outsourcing or technology transfers to China, but please do it on you own schedule.

• chrisco255

  yesterday at 11:57 PM

  > In principle I'm against outsourcing or technology transfers to China, but please do it on you own schedule.

  In principle, the tit for tat policy with China should have been initiated 15 years ago. China has restricted its own markets in similar ways since at least that far back, and it was clear then, when they banned Google in 2010, that they were not playing by the same playbook as we were.

  The U.S. doesn't control oil in the Middle East, that would be Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, etc, all sovereign nations with their own governments. It also produces more domestically than its own demand and is a net exporter of oil.

  Also, not sure why the Ukraine war is the United States responsibility over the EU's responsibility given that its your next-door neighbor and its your eastern flank that would suffer if Ukraine were to fall to Russian control. EU, of course, partly responsible for enriching Russia to the point where it can afford such a war with its own purchases of gas while shuttering nuclear power plants for indescribable reasons.

  • throw58753

    today at 2:42 AM

    One point to clear up, China did not ban Google. Google left China because they refused to comply with Chinese data sovereignty laws.

    Google even tried to crawl back with a search engine that did comply with Chinese laws put activist employees forced them to stop.

    Both Microsoft and Apple fully comply with Chinese laws and are doing really well there.

    • CalRobert

      today at 7:07 AM

      When I hear "data sovereignty" I usually think of things like transfers to another country, etc. Are you using it to refer to censorship here?

      If memory serves, China wanted to censor Google, Google declined (had a redirect to the Hong Kong site for a while), China blocked accessing foreign Google sites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China has more.

  • filloooo

    today at 2:16 AM

    People like to play the victims, nobody else wanted to buy these unattractive companies back then, but once these companies are turned around or eventually fail, suddenly they are of national importance, we were ripped off.

    The Google Facebook examples probably would hold better if the US hadn't axed TikTok, also, Google isn't banned in China, they refused to comply with censorship regulations and left themselves.

    Rules only apply when the people that set the rules win, maybe China is to be blamed for seeing through this cruel world earlier.

    • thenthenthen

      today at 2:42 AM

      Google did not even leave, they have a huge office tower in Beijing, Zhongguancun.

      • Congeec

        today at 7:47 AM

        depending on how you define "leave". The search engine was shutdown, and the office still has business like ads

  • vachina

    today at 1:24 AM

    Ukraine-Russian conflict is a result of US instigation. Totally their responsibility.

    • binarymax

      today at 2:10 AM

      The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is the result of Russian instigation.

• Denvercoder9

  yesterday at 8:58 PM

  > The timing is weird, just after Trump's latest escalation with China.

  The news is coming out now, but it actually happened September 30th.

• jacquesm

  yesterday at 8:58 PM

  Correlation != causation.

Expect more of this to come, it's an unstated goal of the Chinese Communist Party to deindustrialize the West, the UK had to intervene too a few months ago to stop them from destroying their steel producing capacity.

• mk89

  today at 6:44 AM

  Well, when you read things like this [0] you wonder if they have not reached it yet? I mean, they are producers and sellers now.

  [0]: https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/EN/Presse...

• SalmoShalazar

  today at 2:22 AM

  The west is doing a fine job at deindustrializing all by itself.

Great. Absolutely outstanding from the Dutch government, to not let China dominate Europe however it wants.

Securing a Chip industry independent from China, Taiwan and the US has to be the top long term security interest. I only hope that the EU can use it's power to make things like this more feasible and to keep Europe independent from US/Chinese interests.

• thewebguyd

  yesterday at 8:57 PM

  > Great. Absolutely outstanding from the Dutch government, to not let China dominate Europe however it wants.

  Arguably the time to do that was in 2018, they could have blocked Nexperia from being aquired by Wingtech in the first place. But I supposed the second best time is now.

• bgnn

  yesterday at 9:16 PM

  The same government forced NXP to sell its RF power division to Chinese JAC in 2015 due to NXP and Freescale merger. Isn't that great?

  • constantcrying

    today at 4:45 AM

    Firstly, that wasn't "the same government". Secondly, better course correct now than never.

• filloooo

  today at 2:20 AM

  Hope you would be as excited when other countries start to follow the lead.

  • constantcrying

    today at 4:43 AM

    Of course. Securing Europes independence is extremely important, other countries should follow and seize more Chinese assets.

It's ok. It's fine when the EU does it. It's only wrong and against capitalism when others do it. Like protectionism.

• VagabundoP

  yesterday at 7:53 PM

  I think its fine to have national and strategic interests. China isn't someone that you can just trust, they are exporting to Russia on the sly and therefore supporting war in Europe because it suits them.

  • dmix

    yesterday at 8:51 PM

    > and therefore supporting war in Europe because it suits them.

    FWIW, EU countries are still sending more money to Russia for oil than they send Ukraine in aid. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more...

    Modern global economies are complicated.

    • corimaith

      yesterday at 9:38 PM

      This is a tired talking point. If the EU stopped those imports abruptly they'd blow up their own economies and there would be chaos on the streets.

      It is stupid that they put themselves in that position, but they've also greatly reduced their dependency as the war progressed.

      With the current trade war and their own domestic troubles, China cannot afford to alienate other foreign markets, hence why this is the prime time to drive concessions against them.

  • dylan604

    yesterday at 8:25 PM

    > they are exporting to Russia on the sly

    is it really on the sly though?

  • holoduke

    yesterday at 9:28 PM

    The Euro stance on buying US weapons for Ukraine is probably the most dumbest strategic move or the century. Europe is losing at an alarming rate in many ways. I would be more concerned about the US if I were Europe.

  • isaacremuant

    yesterday at 8:01 PM

    [flagged]

    • seanw444

      yesterday at 8:26 PM

      Quite simple, really: our way of doing things is better, and therefore it's better when we do it.

• corimaith

  yesterday at 9:26 PM

  Well clearly clinging free trade while others pursue protectionism/industrial strategy at massive scales against you isn't sustainable.

  Is it hypocrisy of you decide to punch back after getting punched? Not really. And China certainly was the much more protectionist than the EU for the three decades.

• saubeidl

  yesterday at 7:48 PM

  Why is "against capitalism" == wrong? Maybe it's right because it's against capitalism.

  • isaacremuant

    yesterday at 8:00 PM

    [flagged]

    • Fraterkes

      yesterday at 8:22 PM

      How do you know the person you are replying to is applying it selectively?

Okay. Now do that for most major Dutch companies please.

Sell your industry to private equity, this is what happens. Someone who values it will take it up. Many such cases.

[flagged]

• barrenko

  yesterday at 7:39 PM

  Read the article.

• heavyset_go

  yesterday at 7:42 PM

  It's just capitalism

  • tirant

    yesterday at 8:02 PM

    This has nothing to do with capitalism. This is pure government intervention in a global market where other competing governments (China) are extremely interventionist already.

    Capitalism != Free Market

    • Muromec

      yesterday at 8:15 PM

      Free market is for the times when you keep winning, once you start losing, it's time to protect national security (tm).

    • heavyset_go

      yesterday at 9:34 PM

      It's just capitalist governments doing capitalist things like the bidding of the owner class, as they've always done. There's never been a time that capitalist states didn't appropriate property from one party in order to give it to the wealthy. Calling this "clepto capitalism" is a distinction without meaning.

> extraordinary move to ensure a sufficient supply of its chips remains available in Europe amid rising global trade tensions.

It’s like they beg China to do something with Taiwan.