Nexperia said on Friday it’s not to blame for any stalled production in China, firmly rejecting accusations from its Chinese division that it’s been choking wafer supplies and leaving operations without funding.
The Dutch chipmaker said its China unit has plenty of wafers and finished chips to keep going “for several months,” and suggested poor inventory handling by the local team might be the real problem.
The harsh pushback came after it got leaked on social media that Nexperia China told its own employees earlier that day that Dutch management was “blocking the supplies,” “not allocating funds,” and giving “no support” to keep the lights on.
Wingtech’s ousted CEO at center of widening rift
The company, based in Nijmegen, Netherlands, is owned by China’s Wingtech Technology, and it builds power chips used by big-name carmakers like BMW and Volkswagen.
But things took a turn in September, when the Dutch government stepped in to take control of key decisions at Nexperia, citing security concerns. That move triggered retaliation from Beijing, which clamped down on exports of Nexperia’s products. Car manufacturing across Europe was thrown into chaos almost immediately.
The tension didn’t stop there. Dutch authorities had acted on claims that Zhang Xuezheng, Wingtech’s founder and then CEO of Nexperia, was stripping company assets to boost his other businesses.
They believed he was risking the stability of Europe’s chip supply, and a Dutch court suspended him in October after Nexperia’s European management filed a petition. Wingtech denies the claims and has been pressuring hard for Zhang to be reinstated.
On Friday, Nexperia tried to downplay the tension, but made clear it still doesn’t trust how things are being run on the ground in China. “Any claims to the contrary lead to serious doubt over stock management practices by local management,” it said.
China, meanwhile, has slowly started to allow some exports from Nexperia’s China factory, one of the largest chip sites in the world.
But it’s happening only under exemptions, not a full rollback of export restrictions. Nexperia confirmed that on Friday, saying this wasn’t a “full restoration of the supply chain.”
China lashes out over Dutch minister’s comments
In a separate blow to already-fragile diplomacy, China’s Ministry of Commerce snapped back at the Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Vincent Karremans on Friday for calling the government seizure of Nexperia the “right decision.”
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Karremans said, “I would have done the same thing again,” referring to the Dutch state asserting control over the Chinese-owned firm.
A Chinese spokesperson said Beijing was “extremely disappointed” and described the remarks as “misleading, distorted and willful.” The ministry added that the Dutch move had thrown “a once-stable global chip supply chain into chaos.”
As diplomatic jabs fly, Nexperia is pushing forward with what it calls “workaround solutions.” The company said it’s been selling and shipping wafers directly to customers to sidestep the supply logjam. “We are committed to maintaining these workaround solutions for as long as necessary,” the company said.
At the same time, Nexperia is preparing a long game. It said it’s working to expand capacity at other locations, with new phases rolling out across 2026. That could ease dependence on the China flow, but not anytime soon.
A Dutch delegation is expected in Beijing early next week. The plan? To try and hash out a “mutually agreeable” solution to this entire standoff. Whether anyone budges remains to be seen.
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