The Sino-Dutch row over the control of the Chinese-owned, Netherlands-based chipmaker Nexperia deepened on Friday, as the company’s China units accused the head office of “malicious sabotage” and “shirking responsibilities”.
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This latest development threatened to put at risk a meeting between the Dutch and Chinese sides early next week in Beijing. The Netherlands’ Minister of Economic Affairs, Vincent Karremans, on Thursday said the dialogue was aimed at finding a “mutually agreeable solution” to the dispute.
In a joint letter sent on Friday by Nexperia’s nine units on the mainland to all employees of the Dutch chipmaker, they slammed senior management for “maliciously sabotaging Nexperia China’s production and operations” by suspending wafer supplies, casting doubt on the quality of its products and failing to provide agreed-upon funding and support.
The Dutch government “has yet to take any concrete action to cease infringing upon the lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises or to restore stability to the global semiconductor supply chain”, according to the letter.
The letter was apparently in response to a letter that the Dutch-installed Nexperia CEO, Stefan Tilger, sent to the chipmaker’s China employees on November 12.
The content of Tilger’s letter was not disclosed, but the Chinese team has said that it “distorted the facts and attempted to confuse the issue, which fully reflected the attitude of certain members of the management team at Nexperia Netherlands, who are shirking responsibility and disregarding the vital interests of all employees at Nexperia China”.
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