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Finbarr Bermingham of the SCMP on Nexperia, Export Controls, and Europe's Impossible Position
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join me each week for in depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you this week from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sinica is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Sinica Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing with the show and with the newsletter, please consider lending your support. You can reach me, as always@synecopodmail.com so today we are going to be talking about the nextperia dispute, which turned out to be one of the most revealing moments in the global contest over semiconductor supply chains. Nextperia is a major Dutch headquartered semiconductor manufacturer known not for cutting edge chips, not for the GPUs used in AI training, but actually for the indispensable components, the transistors, the diodes, the power management chips that are foundational to automotive and many industrial electronics. In 2019, NextPerity became a wholly owned subsidiary of Wingtech, a Shanghai listed Chinese manufacturing and semiconductor firm with partial state linked ownership, I believe. For several years the acquisition drew relatively little public controversy. But by late 2025, two things had shifted quite dramatically. First, Europe, and especially the Netherlands, was coming under increasing pressure to rethink dependencies in key technologies. Second, and more decisively, the US Commerce Department extended its export controls with what became known as the Affiliate Rule, so that any entity that is 50% or more owned by a company on the entity list is itself subject to the same restrictions. Because Wingtech was already on the entity list, Naxperia suddenly became implicated. This threw into question the company's access to U.S. technology inputs and raised fears in the Hague about the stability of supply to Europe's automotive and industrial sectors. In response, on September 30, the day after the affiliate rule was rolled out, which was September 29, the Dutch government took the extraordinary step of invoking emergency powers under the Goods Availability act to assume temporary control of Naxperia and suspend wingtech founder Zhang Xuezhong from management. Beijing retaliated by restricting exports of Dixperia chips packaged at Chinese facilities, a move that immediately hit European supply chains and forced high level diplomatic intervention, including direct discussions between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. On the sidelines of apec, a temporary thaw now seems to be in effect and China has said that next period China will begin shipping again. But the underlying issues remain unsettled. Industrial sovereignty, control of manufacturing know how and the broader question of how Europeans position themselves between US pressure and Chinese integration into global production networks. So to help us unpack all of this, I am delighted to be joined by Finbar Birmingham, the Brussels based Europe correspondent for the South China Morning Post. Finbar has been reporting on Europe China relations with nuance, with texture, with astonishing sourcing for some years now. His coverage of the Nick Spiri episode in particular has been absolutely essential reading. His reporting, drawing on court documents, on official statements, on expert discussions, has really illuminated the interplay of national security concerns, geopolitics and economic stakes. So I've really been looking forward to having him walk through all that happened and what it means. Finbar man, welcome back to Sinica.
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Thank you Kaiser. It's great to be with you again.
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Finbar. In much of the early coverage, especially in the more general international press, this story was framed very simply as Europe cracks down on a Chinese tech acquisition. But as your reporting made clear, the background context was actually much more complicated than that. Could you sketch out what was missing from those first narratives? The geopolitical atmosphere and the growing anxieties around supply chain sovereignty. The whole pre existing US China tech tensions that weren't really part of the initial reporting and I feel like are really necessary to understand how this dispute erupted when it and where it did.
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Yeah, I'm happy to do so. I mean just to sort of preface it with this sort of statement that if, if you were to go to a Hollywood studio with a, a script that was supposed to depict the position that Europe finds itself in in 2025 and you came up with this next story, they would probably tell you that it's a little bit too on the nose. It's really been quite remarkable how it's unfolded but. But yeah, it's not a simplistic story like nobody's coming out of this looking very good. I think that there are several truths here and you know, as I said, there are no real winners coming out of this. I think what you're getting at is that the company was effectively seized by a Dutch government ruling on September 30 and then on October 7 the Dutch court stepped in really hard and issued an ex parte ruling which suspended the CEO and appointed an interim independent director. With a casting vote over all of nextperia entities. Now the beautiful thing about that moment was the fantastic nature of Dutch transparency means that the court released a TikTok of exactly what had happened over the several years leading up to this. And we could see from these court documents that the Dutch had long running concerns about the governance of the company. Indeed. But we could also see that there was a quite clear effort from the United States to pressure the Dutch government to have the next period Chinese management removed. So there were, there were pre existing concerns dating back to 2023, which is also like a perfect little story arc to illustrate the deterioration in EU China ties. Because as you said in your intro, this company was purchased in 2018, going on to 2019 at a different time, there was less sort of cynicism and suspicion towards Chinese investment.
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Right.
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But we saw that by the time 2023 came along, this company, because of its Chinese ownership, was being frozen out of some EU funding of losing out on certain clientele. And that was directly, the company said, related to its ownership. So they stepped in and they asked the Dutch Economy Ministry to ring fence it from its Chinese ownership. And this is all in the court documents. And for a while the Chinese CEO, whose nickname is Wing, was cooperating with this and seemingly negotiating in good faith. You know, there were various structures considered, but things really started going wrong, as you said, when they, when, when the US added Wingtech, the parent company, to the entity list in December 20wing and the management pushed back very strongly about this and they were still in negotiation, but it turned into a bit of a messy situation. The tide really turned in 2025 when the CEO resisted all of the Dutch demands to restructure and Europeanize the company, even as the risk was increasing that there would be some sort of fragmentation due to the entity list. And then it emerged that he had dismissed the Dutch or attempted to dismiss the Dutch leadership, revoked certain financial authorization and you know, he'd been placing huge orders for wafers to be used by Nixberia with his own fab under the Wingtech umbrella in Shanghai. And then mid-2025 is when we saw that the US government was really starting to intervene quite seriously. They were pressuring the Dutch government, who in turn then pressured Nexperia to get rid of Wing and the Chinese ownership. And some of the quotes that were coming out of that document were absolutely incredible. One of them that I have written here is divestment takes time. But the fact that the company's Chinese CEO is still the same Chinese owner is problematic. I mean, it's quite clear they wanted him gone, which was eventually what happened in October. So the Experia was in this position where they'd been trying to be recognized as a European company. And then that became absolutely imperative when the affiliate list or the affiliate room was announced. And they had a fair warning of this from the summertime know that the Dutch were aware of this. And so that raises further questions about why they, they acted in such a sort of, what seemed to be a kind of panicky way on the day that the affiliate rule was, was published. So this is a blockbuster story. The economy minister gave an interview to the Guardian this week in which he described it as an economic thriller. And it's hard to argue with that description. It's about as juicy as it gets on this beat.
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I mean, it sounds like the June announcement, which you kind of, you know, discovered in the documents. The June interference by the United States really reframed the whole story. What else? What was in there? Give me a clear sense of how the US sought to put its thumb on the scale at that point.
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Yeah, I mean, they were warning the Dutch government that this affiliate rule was coming and they said that unless the ownership changes, then Experia will be added to this affiliate list. So, you know, this is, as you said, the subsidiaries of Chinese companies who were placed on the entity list. So I mean, it was fairly black and white what they were asking for. And if you speak with the Dutch, I mean, the Dutch will say that it's inescapable that this is the context within which it was happening. But in the background you had all of this financial malfeasance and what they have called severe governance issues on the part of the CEO. So what I have found quite challenging with this one is to separate where one ends and the other one begins. It's hard to imagine that the Dutch government would have moved on the same day that the affiliate rule was announced had it been something that was happening in isolation without that sort of Damocles hanging over the situation, you know, without the United States lobbying and pressuring and threatening to add them to the list, as you say, you know, they're, they're, they're insistent in the Hague that they, they are acting without duress. Although it's, you know, it's impossible to separate it from that very strong geopolitical context.
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But your reporting makes clear that they were not just reacting to Washington. I mean, Dutch officials were genuinely worried about the possibility that production, the know how embedded in that production was being you know, relocated to the newer facilities in China. Right. The next period. Know how?
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Yeah, yeah, there was a legit, I mean, there seems to be a genuine fear that they were going to wind down operations in the hamp. So they have fabs in Manchester in England and in Hamburg in the Netherlands and in Germany rather. And then they have 70% of all of the packaging of these wafers and testing happens in Dongguan and they have smaller facilities to do that in Malaysia and the Philippines. So they had, they say they have evidence that the Chinese owner was planning to move in some way or other the fabrication from the Hamburg plant to China, which in terms of economic security would be quite severe because as you, as you said in your intro, I mean these are essential to the well being and just the general functionality of the European automotive sector. I mean these are. Nextperia makes something like 100 billion chips a year, which is an extraordinary number. And the way that they've been described in the Dutch press is that they're the salt and pepper, they're not the sexy high end chips that, you know, as you said, they're the basic ones that help the indicators go, that help you turn the lights on in the car, that keep the air con running. So they're really the bread and butter of automotive. So we've seen already, you know, since China introduced the export controls in response to what's happening, what the Dutch government did, we've seen that there's been a crunch on the chip supply chain already. So the thought of this facility moving permanently to China or that production at least being sort of maneuvered out of Europe to China was something that struck fear into their hearts. So this is what I'm sort of saying. It's, you know, they have all of these things going on at the same time. There are many, many truths to this story, it would seem.
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And one has to sort of pity the, the Dutch. I mean, on the one hand, you know, their policymakers are trying to balance these concrete industrial fears that you're talking about, but also the political imperative of looking like, well, I mean, they want some modicum of strategic autonomy as well. Right. They don't want to look like they're simply caving into pure American pressure.
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Right? Absolutely. And you know, you would expect them to say that this was something that they did autonomously with regulatory autonomy, even if it wasn't. I mean, this is something that they're going to say. I mean, I guess they probably said the same thing about asml when they were forced to stop selling EUV machines to China all those years ago. But it did put them in a, in a terrible position. And it's unfortunate that the Dutch, through their own technological success, I suppose, has been the European Union member state that has found itself in the firing line twice. I mean, I spoke to a Dutch diplomat about this during the early days of the crisis, and he said, I mean, we had very poor options here. We no good options. We were damned if we did, damned if we didn't, and damned anyway, because the options were basically, you don't intervene, the company gets added to the affiliates list and perhaps the facility moves to China eventually, if not immediately. The alternative is what they did and they intervened and they ended up getting cut off from the Chinese headquarters. So it was always going to be a messy. When they took, they took the choice that they did. And interestingly, in the, in this interview that I mentioned in the Guardian newspaper today, the Economy Minister Kerrimans has come out and said that he has no regrets.
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Right. He would do it again.
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He would do the same thing again. Right, right, yeah. Which I was, I was at an event in Brussels today, a conference. It was a lot of businesses and officials and diplomats and so on. I spoke to someone from a Chinese business association and I said to her, what do you, what do you think about this quote? And she said, I'm absolutely speechless. And I think that sentiment would be shared not just among Chinese businesses. I think there would be a lot of European businesses who would also wince at the, at the, at the sense of caramel saying that he would do the same thing again because it's been hugely disruptive. You know, we've had people comparing this to the dark days of COVID when chips were running low because of the pandemic containment controls. So, you know, he says he has no regrets, but I'm not sure that's a common sentiment around Europe at the moment.
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So the Dutch actually invoked a strange Cold War era law that most people had never heard of before, called the Goods Availability Act. What was that originally written for? I mean, and was that. I don't know. Was that a strange maneuver in your view?
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Not really sure what it was written for. It was first written in the 1930s and then eventually updated in 1952, which is the version that we're dealing with today. It had never, ever been used before. So somebody obviously had to rake through the legal archives and sort of figure out what options they had available. It's not like, I'm sure this thing's been sitting on the tip of Everybody's lips forever. The thing that's strange to me, Kaiser, is this happened on September 30th. They invoked this act, whereas the court, which of course operates independently of the Dutch government, moved on October 7th to suspend the CEO. And I was surprised to read Karaman's saying today that he would do the same thing again, because it would strike me, and I'm by no means an expert on this, that perhaps if you had the hindsight that you do now and you knew that the court was going to intervene, you would maybe just wait and allow the court to do that because it would give you some political cover. You know, so there was two things going on here, and the government moved as it did, for whatever reasons it felt it had to. But then the court, moving independently, suspended the. The Chinese CEO and installed an interim CEO in Europe. So perhaps that's something that maybe they, you know, if he really did have his time again, maybe he would think twice and leave it up to the courts.
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I'm idle speculation here, but I would think that if I were the Dutch, maybe I would want to shift some of the blame to the United States. I would want to time it so that it was clear to any Chinese observer that they were simply helpless before American political pressure, and that that would maybe exculpate the Netherlands in some sense. I don't. I don't know.
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It's a fair point, but it's actually the opposite of what you've seen. They've been going to great lengths to try and distance themselves from the United States. And I think it's because it's Dutch election season. It's Dutch election season, and.
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Right.
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They already had the ASML saga over several years. And, you know, we've heard a lot of talk over the last year and more, but mainly since Trump returned about independent Europe and Europe being a geopolitical, geo economic actor and so on. And so the idea of being forced into doing something by the United States doesn't necessarily fit with that whole shtick. So I suppose you're right. You know, you could just throw the Americans under the bus and say, all right, we didn't have a choice here, but it's not the options that the Dutch have taken.
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True, true, true. I hear that the Chinese CEO Zhang Xiazheng, was actually very much aware of the arrival of the affiliate rule and that a lot of the things that he's being blamed for, of shifting assets to the Chinese operation were done just sort of in anticipation of that. And now those are being used as the malfeasance that prompted them to take this legal action. Is there any truth to that?
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I haven't heard that. I don't know. I mean, it's quite clear that they were all aware that this was going to happen because that's in the court documents and this was a part of their discussions. If you look at the timeline that the court pieced together, it does seem that once Zhang learned that Wingtech was being added to the entity list, that's when he stopped playing ball in these negotiations with the Dutch government. And you can say, why not? Why would he, you know, why would he play ball whenever he's ostensibly got not much to gain? I suppose he could keep, you know, the whole value chain going, et cetera. But you can understand, I mean, one thing that's quite clear in this story is that everybody's sort of looking out for themselves. You know, this idea of cooperation, that the, perhaps the purchase of the company represented back in 2018 is long gone. It seemed as though, and you see this continuing now even after it's being sort of paused, the crisis, that the company branches in the Netherlands and China are still at each other's throats and they're still not cooperating very well. And it seems as though over the course of 2025, that's what happened. The Dutch felt like they needed to sort of protect their own supply chain. CEO Zhang, for whatever reason, decided that, hang on, I'm not playing ball. It's not in my interest to do this. And the actions that he took financially seemed to be to strengthen other areas of his business. So I hadn't heard what you've described there, but I suppose it would maybe fit with that, that broader perspective.
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I mean, when Experie decided to stop shipment of chips out of the Dungland facility back to Europe, was this something that was they were directed to do by Beijing, or was this something that Naxperia itself in. In the Netherlands, that Wingtuck undertook to do? Do you have a sense of that? Was this, in other words, was this a state policy?
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Yeah, there was an export control introduced, so it was a state policy. There's an official policy from. From that these chips couldn't be shipped out without a license. And what we've seen in recent weeks, over the last 10 days to two weeks is that the progress that's been made since the US China summit in Busan is that the chips can now be shipped to end users without licenses, provided that they're not. That they're being used for civilian purposes. So this is how they've managed to unlock the Chinese end of the supply chain. So there wasn't like a petty move on the part of the CEO to say, hang on a minute, well, you're screwing with us, so I'm not going to ship my chips to you. This was actually a retaliatory move, a measure taken by mofcom officially that was subsequently published on their website.
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Okay, and when did that roll out? What was the date when MOFCOM announced this?
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The MOFCOM action was, I think, October 4th. So the intervention from the Dutch happened on the same day as the. As the affiliate rule on September 3rd 30th. Five days later, MOFCOM imposes export controls on Experia's backend operations and its subcontractors in China so they can control what's being shipped out of the country. And then on October 7, we had the Dutch court ruling. Ruling, which sort of crystallized the fact that the Chinese management would be suspended for the time being. So what a crazy week that was.
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Yeah, I mean, because of course, that very same week we have the bigger mofcom announcement about Rare Earth Export Control trolls that, that came out. So, yeah, a crazy week indeed. And, and the next period story actually was initially just sort of a background. I mean, it didn't, it didn't come out right away. In fact, it was, it was really strange that I first read about it on various substacks, not through, you know, news reporting.
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It was me too. On to Chen Wang's peak analogy was where I first saw it, actually.
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Right, right, right.
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That's.
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That's the one. It was ancient Wong. Fantastic. So obviously this did not stay just a Dutch story, became, you know, I think one of the early cases cited in Brussels as justification for a wider rethink of Europe's economic security posture. I mean, we got the Commission's de risking framework outbound investment screening entered the conversation. And of course, you know, Washington expanded its export controls with the affiliate role, which is, you know, the approximate cause for this. From your vantage point in Brussels, what do policymakers now take away from this case? What has shifted fundamentally in the EU's understanding of risks around Chinese ownership, integration in strategic sectors? Are we going to see a big change in what sorts of acquisitions are now going to be approved in the eu? I mean, what lessons have been learned?
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I think, absolutely. I think this purchase wouldn't happen today. It wouldn't even have happened several years ago if it came onto the desks of European officials. I mean, they only introduced their inbound investment screening mechanism, I think in 2020 that's currently being upgraded at the moment. This happened in a certain time when things weren't quite so bad between the EU and China. Even though the Dutch are some of the most advanced thinkers in Europe vis a vis economic security, simply because they're home to asml, they've had to deal with these things earlier than others. They're also quite vehement free traders. So I think in 2018 it wouldn't have been on too many people's radars that free enterprise should be disrupted. But I think absolutely now this deal would really not happen. I don't think it would even be proposed, to be honest. I think that what we've seen from the FDI screening regime that the Europeans have introduced, it's deterred a lot of bids that would potentially have been questioned by the authorities. Anyway, look, we'll only know in the passage of time. I'm fed up. I've been doing this job for about five years and you know, we talk a lot about overcapacity in China and in Europe. They have an overcapacity in wake up calls because it seems like from every year that I've been here, there's been a wake up call about something else, be it Covid, the pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the rarest issue, you know that Trump's first term, his second term, and now the next period crisis. They're talking about this as another wake up call. But I think the combination of the rare earth export controls and the next baria saga has put a rocket under efforts to try and build some sort of European diversification. I don't know if you can call it self sufficiency just yet because it's going to take so, so long to do that. But you know, you start to see that officials are now talking with fairly intense urgency about finding alternative supplies. They're pooling opinions from the industries across the union to find out who uses what chips and for what purpose. And like, I mean, this is something they probably should have been doing before, but it's galvanized the efforts to do this. I think that the cumulative impact of 2025 so far is to just make many people and many politicians in Europe realize how strategically structurally weak and vulnerable they are. And you see this after the so called, the summer of surrender that they were calling it in the dealings that the Europeans had with the United States. And I think that the, their, their engagements with China this year have really served to emphasize that sentiment.
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B
And yet we talk about strategic autonomy, we talk about de risking as if there's like a unified European position. But of course there isn't. I mean, the Dutch government has its own sets of pressures, you know, that are unique to it. Because, like as you said, asml and of course, next period, Germany's industrial base and especially, you know, the auto sector, they're very deeply tied to China. And you know, you have Brussels trying to articulate something that sounds coherent at the EU level, but, you know, Europe is quite divided. Can you walk us through how the lines of fracture are, you know, who's driving the harder line, who's resisting? How much of the current policy direction is really just Germany deciding how far it is willing to go and how much of it is other actors?
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Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly fragmented. All through the year they've been talking about unity and the need to have unity, and it's almost as if they're trying to wish it into existence. And it's not just on China, but it's particularly obvious on China and on the United States. In fact, I would hypothesize that the debates this year over how to respond to Donald Trump's tariffs and whether to use this so called trade bazooka that they have the anti coercion instrument to, there's almost been a mirror image of the debate about tariffs on electric vehicles made in China last year.
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Yeah.
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So there's a definite sense that when it comes to dealing with the major powers of the world, that the European idea of unity crumbles. So in terms of where the lines are drawn, I mean, I would say that it's not just an EU problem, it's a national problem as well. In Germany, there's no real semblance of coherence of unity vis a vis China. I mean, you will have seen in the news, of course, a couple of weeks ago that the German Foreign Minister was forced to cancel a trip. He chose to cancel a trip to China because he couldn't arrange enough meetings. This week we have the Vice Chancellor over in Beijing on party business.
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B
Well, he did get Wang Yi as a meeting. I mean, it's.
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Yeah, he had a meeting with Wang Yi and then everything else was cancelled. So, you know, I think he probably should have gone. Who else does he need to meet apart from the Foreign Minister?
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B
Right, right.
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But the point I was making is that even on a sort of domestic level, there's very little coherence. So I suppose if you were to slice and dice it, what you see is several European Union members who are very happy to engage with China for, for very probably different reasons. In each case, the Hungarians, Slovakians and the Spaniards are leading the chase. They're really trying to attract Chinese investments in Spain. Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister, is painting himself as a sort of anti Trump figure. He's one of the few leaders left on the left, you know, and he's really trying to cast himself as a sort of alternative, a social democrat in the face of, of, of sort of the rising populist autocracies or would be autocracies or authoritarians across the West. The Hungarians. Viktor Orban, you know, I mean, he's long tried to play all sides against each other. Brussels, Beijing, Washington, he does that quite successfully. Slovaks, Robert Fitz, who was almost like a mini me of Orban and then the Germans. Yeah, Guided by industry, as you said, by far and away the largest trading partner and investor in Europe towards China. And so they have struggled with this transition from free and open markets to a bit more of a sort of economic security dominated landscape and they still haven't figured out what direction they're going in. France again is also a little bit all over the place. I mean, they're the ones who are probably the most gung ho in terms of using the trade, defense weapons that Europe has against China. I mean, they just love this idea of industrial policy and protectionism. And you know, the French diplomats that I know joke and rejoice in the fact that the rest of Europe is becoming a little bit more French now and then. I think you have a lot of other countries who don't really have clearly formulated views towards China, who hitch their, hitch their wagons to the European mainstream. And then on the other side, I suppose you have those who would be considered to be on the more hawkish side, the Baltics, Lithuania, Czech Republic, which is quite close to Taiwan. General rule of, rule of thumb. The closer you get to Russia, the more pushback there is against China, which is something that's flared up particularly over the last three and a half years of war on European soil. And you're right, Brussels is like more coherent. I suppose it's quite clear what's going on in Brussels. Whether or not that's representative of what's the view and the vibe in other European capitals is very debatable.
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B
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- [30:59]
A
I think they probably were doing all of that, but to be honest, I'm not sure. Germany had a massive role to play here, as we just said. I mean, the foreign minister had his trip to China cancelled and that would have been the perfect venue or occasion through which the Germans could influence Chinese thinking. It didn't happen. They had a phone call, much of which the readouts seemed to be a lot of sort of lecturing from from Wang Yi to, to Waterpool about his about the activities that seemed to have led to the cancellation of the trip, which was some quite forthright speeches regarding Taiwan, one of which was delivered in Japan during the World War II commemorative period. So I think they were upset with that. Germany has been in a funny position about this in some of the German press. There were state secretaries of the German coalition government offering to mediate between the Hague and China and Beijing. Unusual implication that Germany is in some way neutral in this, when I suppose the Dutch was probably looking to Berlin for some solidarity on this. But yeah, I don't know that they had a terribly great role in unpicking that. But in saying that Kaiser not quite clear that any European actor had a major role to play here. The commission has been doing a bit of a victory lap since the announcements 10 days ago saying, you know, we're glad that our diplomacy has been paying off, but it's hard to escape the idea that this was solved without any European at the table, if not during the Xi Jinping Donald Trump talks. Because I have heard that it wasn't actually discussed by the two leaders, but certainly in the period around that.
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B
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because right in the middle of all of this, the Trump SEA meeting happened in Busan on the sidelines of apec. It was framed more broadly as kind of a reset moment, but for this dispute specifically. Is there. So you saw no evidence that Busan had any impact on this? I mean, I think the impression that many people got was that it created kind of a new diplomatic space for a climb down. I don't know what your sense of it was.
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A
I absolutely agree, Kaiser, that this is, I think, no, I think we've crossed wires here. This is, I think, where it was resolved. But I don't think that they directly discussed nextperia as a company. You know, if you look at the timing of this meeting, they didn't talk for that long. And when you, when you sort of slice and dice it between how much time is taken up by the translators, I'd be shocked if the actual situation of nakesperia was discussed at that level. But it was inserted into the White House fact sheet on the Saturday after the summit. And it, as you described earlier in the, in the conversation, the very fact that the affiliates rule was paused would be the sort of the green light, I suppose, for the next period situation to be resolved indirectly.
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B
Right.
- [33:48]
A
I mean, the truth of the matter is nobody really knows exactly what it was that led to this. But all signals post point to the fact that it was probably the climb down on the several fronts on which there were climb downs. The pausing of the export controls on the Chinese side, the affiliate rule being paused. And one way or another, it seems as though the next period case was swept up in that. And that's actually not a bad way to describe what's been happening in Europe over the course of 2025. For better or worse, we keep getting swept up in the superpower rivalry.
- [34:22]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder whether there's sort of maybe, you know, a deeper conversation that's really happening. I mean, is, is this going to just strengthen the case for tighter investment screening and, and more European industrial policy, or is there maybe just this or resignation that Europe is just going to sleepwalk into being just kind of this proxy theater for a US China Rivalry to play out. I wonder. I also, I also have this question about, you know, this, this, this Goods Availability Act. I mean, it was so obscure, it was so obviously improvised for this specific situation. I mean, when you talk to policymakers and legal experts, do they see this as like a model now for how European governments are going to intervene in those cases when ownership and governance in technology companies raises risks that, you know, emerged years after an acquisition is actually approved? I mean, because I can't imagine Nakespeare is the only case in the entire continent of Europe where this sort of Damocles hangs over.
- [35:27]
A
Yeah, no, it's a fair question. I mean, I'd be surprised. I mean, you have to look at the reaction and what happened afterwards. It's been such a mess and the disruption that has been caused by the intervention and the subsequent Chinese export controls. I think Will would, would, if any, if any, European government was thinking about doing this. I mean, they would be thinking twice whenever they have seen what the chaos that has unfolded after that. You know, I haven't heard too many people singing and dancing and celebrating what the Dutch have done here. The thing is about this story, it's almost like whatever you think, whatever your views on politics and geopolitics are, you can look at this story and they will be confirmed. If you think Europe is a vassal of the United States, you will look at this and it will be confirmed. If you think it's about time that Europe acted quickly to protect its own economic security, you could probably look at this and make a case for it being confirmed. If you think that the Dutch government was hopelessly ill advised, you could certainly look at this and make a case for it. So it's a really complicated one, but I think that China's response, as we've seen on several fronts down the years in Europe, China's response and very forceful and very, very sudden and very quick response to this, I think would have a chilling effect on any European government that was thinking about doing this. Because you're right, there probably are assets dotted around the continent that have Chinese ownership or Chinese investment. But unless it was really going to get to the stage where the proverbial was guaranteed to hit the fan, I think that they, they would be thinking twice about pulling that lever.
- [37:01]
B
So I mean, I think something that stands out in your reporting is just how differently the whole next period thing was perceived in Europe versus in China. And you know, not just strategically, but also really emotionally. I mean, in Europe, you know, it's this vital midstream supplier and in China, it's just sort of held up as evidence that Chinese firms, well, it used to be that, you know, that you could actually succeed and integrate globally. Right now with this dispute and the public acrimony around it, I wonder whether Chinese companies still see the Netherlands or Europe more broadly as just like way less reliable ground for long term investment and integration. I mean, it's like your route to globalization no longer can go through Europe, it feels like. Is this still being treated as sort of an exception or is this a bigger turning point for Chinese firms?
- [37:55]
A
I think both. You know, like if there was a survey actually that yeah, came out yesterday, the Chinese, the main Chinese business lobby group in the Chamber of Commerce in, in, in Europe had a, a survey out last year. They showed that Chinese companies are still making a hell of a lot of money here. Um, it's still a fairly good market, but they are worried about the increased securitization of things. And you know, I spoke to some of, some of the business folks today at this event that I mentioned before and yeah that they, they're looking at this and they're saying this is a bit of a dampener on the investment climate. So I think there are several things to consider. The first is that, you know, large swathes of the US market are for now at least still closed Chinese companies and you know, a lot of them need, let's say it clearly, plainly, like fairly rich markets to absorb quite a lot of the high end goods that they're making. So I think that it would take a lot more than something like this to make them reconsider. Certainly it's an important market for China, but I do think that it's in certain instances, if you're in certain sectors, maybe there would be a question mark. You know, that's, it's an interesting time for this to happen because the Europeans are now trying to think up ways of encouraging Chinese investments in Europe under certain terms. You know, they want to, they talk about a reverse dung, you know, this sort of idea of technology transfer in the EV battery supply chain to Europe.
- [39:17]
B
Yeah.
- [39:18]
A
You know, and I suppose that has become a slightly harder sell whenever, whenever you do see cases like this. But look, I mean, I would say this is the exception to the rule. I mean there's still, there's still an awful lot of trade going on between China and Europe. Europe is still pretty open compared to most parts of the world. And yes, you do see, start to see selective areas in which it's, it's less open that it was. But in the grand scheme of things, it still remains one of the more open markets in the world and like, it'll probably continue to shrink and shrink in more sensitive areas. Like we do start to see things appearing in proposals now where they're proposing all these buy Europe things, you know, sort of buy Europe instead of, and putting, putting conditions on how you can achieve subsidies in Europe and grants and so on and bid for procurement contracts. And these seem to be inserted primarily to, to disincentivize Chinese bidders because they're so hyper competitive and so much cheaper basically than a lot of the European countries companies. So we do start to see a trend. But look, it's, it's still much more open than, than the United States and, and other parts of, of the world. So I think Chinese companies are still pretty interested in, in coming to Europe.
- [40:28]
B
Well, that's a good place to wrap this up and move on to our. I mean, thanks. Thanks so much. I mean, this is just, it's such a complicated case and you've really helped. I mean, I, if it weren't for you reporting on this, I don't know what I would have known about it. It was really terrific that, you know, we had you there in Brussels and that, you know, you're, you're sensitive to. What am I, what am I trying to say? You did a great job in Barcelona.
- [40:51]
A
Thank you very much. I'll take that.
- [40:52]
B
Very good. Tell, tell me a little bit about this, this event that you were at. I saw you tweeting from it earlier.
- [40:57]
A
This. Yeah, this was an annual conference that happens in Brussels. It's usually a bit of fun. It's one of the few arenas in which you see Chinese and Europe, European diplomats sort of jousting in public. It was a little bit more polite today. It's, it's something called the Europe China Forum, organized by a think tank called the Friends of Europe and sponsored by the Chinese mission. So they usually fly in some academics and think tankers from China. They had people like Wang Yiwei there today and several others. And so historically in the last few years, it's always been a good story to come out of there. And I said, when I say a good story, I mean, journalistically speaking, it can be a bit spicy, it can be a bit punchy. The sort of stuff that you imagine goes on behind closed doors tends to spill out into the public. But actually it was very polite today. And that to me was a reflection of the horrible position that Europe is in. They seem to be in a de escalatory mode. There wasn't any idea, any sense of like trying to fact check what Chinese speakers were saying on issues like trade or economics or, or Russia or Ukraine. Which would have happened. Yeah, exactly. Which would have happened in, in previous years. It was much more like, much more decorous sadly from a, from a journalistic point of view. But maybe not, not a bad thing in terms of bilateral relations. And yeah, it speaks to that bigger issue of Europe's in a tight spot, rare earths. And next period it really could do without picking another fight with China and the public. So, so it was fairly, a fairly dull and non eventful day at the conference today, sadly.
- [42:32]
B
It's kind of how spouses talk to one another. They're kind of on tenter hooks after a big blow up. Nobody wants that again.
- [42:40]
A
Right, Absolutely.
- [42:41]
B
You're sort of very deliberately polite. Very interesting to hear. Well, we will be keeping up on what happens in the aftermath of the next period crisis with your reporting from the scmp. Let's move on to this section that I call Paying It Forward where I ask my guests to just sort of name check somebody who's maybe a younger reporter at the SEMP who's doing good work or not even necessarily at your own paper, but just stay within the realm of journalism and tell me about somebody whose work you think we should be paying attention to.
- [43:13]
A
Yeah, I wanted to give some flowers, as the kids say, to some colleagues. We've got some really talented journalists at the Post. One of them is a guy called Jui Sim who's on the diplomacy desk in Beijing. Did some really good reporting over the course of this year on some of the big events in China that the geopolitical outlook there, the military parade sort of diplomacy and chicanery around that. So Dewey is a real, really, really talented reporter. Another person I would name check is Coco Fung who covers technology in Guangdong and she's been doing some very nice work on nextperia. She was down at the factory in Dongguan interviewing workers and finding out what's going on there. So it's really hard to beat that sort of boots on the ground, you know. And one of the things that SCMP has his boots on the ground in China. Unfortunately not every media can say that these days. And one more if I, if I can be so, so, so bold and I will give a shout out to my North American.
- [44:11]
B
Yes, absolutely.
- [44:12]
A
As well, who probably don't get the credit they deserve. We have some, some real talented folks over in Washington and, and beyond. One that I would Name in particular is Kushbury Razdan. He does some great works reporting on, reporting on the politics of the day, what's going on with Trump, etc. But also some really nice long form stuff on, you know, Chinese Americans in, in the United States, their heritage, US India ties. She's, she's, she's an Indian lady. So, so those are three people that I would name and I know that you said journalists, but I want to give a shout out to one analyst, if I may be so cheeky. Kaiser, he's been exceptional over the course of the next period saga. He's a guy in the Netherlands called Senso Hofsted. Yeah, I said his name wrong. And he has a newsletter in Dutch to come played a few times a week. It's called the Chinese Voden, which means the Chinese forests in Dutch. You can use Google Translate or whatever your tool of choice, but I have found this really useful. He puts it out every few days with a lot of links and just. Thank you for that service. It's been invaluable as we've been all trying to keep track of what's going on in the Dutch press and everything, vis a vis.
- [45:18]
B
Great. Shout out. Sens Hafstad, somebody who I know basically just from social media, not met in person, but always found him to be very, very bright.
- [45:27]
A
Absolutely.
- [45:28]
B
All right, what about recommendations? What you got for us? You got a book or a film or anything at all?
- [45:32]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of keeping with the theme of the podcast. I wanted to shout out several books that have helped me understand the way the world seems to be going and they've probably been mentioned on the podcast before, but one of which was the book Choke Points by Edward Fisher.
- [45:49]
B
Yeah, that one has been mentioned. I'm reading it right now.
- [45:52]
A
Everybody's reading it. I just finished it. So many people in Brussels that I meet are reading it and actually like reading it.
- [46:00]
B
Well, I mean, it couldn't be more timely.
- [46:02]
A
It's. Exactly. And there's some parts in there about asml. There was at one stage where he quotes some, some U.S. national security officials saying they would send a navy vessel to stop a shipment of ASML going to, to China if they had to. It's. It's very juicy, but it's a wee bit too on the nose for what's going on at the moment.
- [46:19]
B
That's been quoted at me a few times.
- [46:22]
A
Yeah. The book you may have may have also been mentioned Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abe Newman from a couple of years ago. I thought those, those are two good companion books which, which really help explain how we got into this sort of economic inter. We know, weaponized interdependency and, and so on. So. So yeah, I mean, if you're interested in this stuff, you will probably enjoy those books. And Kaiser, I'm sorry, I'm pushing my luck here, but there was one essay that I wanted to. To nominate. It's a really short one. It was written by a historian called John Delury, who I'm sure you've encountered before.
- [46:55]
B
Oh yeah, I know John. Yeah.
- [46:58]
A
His little piece on the Engelsberg Ideas website is called what China Wants from Europe. It's quite depressing, but it's actually also a bit of a reality check for those of us in Europe who think that we're sort of at the center of things. His whole thesis in this is that China just sees Europe as an extension of the United States. And he goes through in fairly good detail about where we sit in Europe in terms of China's foreign policy priorities. And it's way down, maybe tier five. So this was actually a really nice piece from a guy who I haven't seen writing about Europe before. So it seems like he's writing very objectively and I find it instructive. I hope he's wrong, but it was an interesting read anyway that your listeners probably would appreciate.
- [47:41]
B
Unfortunately, John Deloury is so bright that he's probably not wrong. I found him to be pretty innate.
- [47:47]
A
That's what I think.
- [47:49]
B
Fantastic scholar. So. Right, right, right. I will read that. I am surprised. I haven't, hasn't crossed my desk yet. So I'll just. As soon as we're done here, I'm gonna head over and find that, that piece. Great. I'm gonna do a nice frivolous European related recommendation. It'll get us off, but it's a French film, actually a pair of them. It's a 2023 adaptation of good old the Three Musketeers. You know, Alexandre Dumas, which is just the archetypal wonderful adventure story for boys. I've seen so many different productions of it, but this one is in two parts. The first is called d' Artagnan and the second is called Milady. It hues very closely to the original story. It's on Amazon prime for you Americans. And it contains what I would just say flat out is the best fight scene I have seen in, in recent memory in a film is everyone knows the story of the Three Musketeers. You know, d' Artagnan arrives in Paris, he wants to enroll in the Musketeers and he ends up just sort of managing to offend and insult and, and, and schedule duels with all three of the Musketeers with Athos, Porthos and, and Aramis. And when they actually finally do meet to, to start the duel, of course the Cardinal's men come to arrest them for dueling and there's this amazing choreographed fight. It's, it looks like I'm not, I can't detest that it is, but it looks like a single tracking shot and like a 10ish minute long single tracking shot across this massive melee. It's just quite a tour de force in filmmaking and in fight choreography. So check that out. Good. Good way to take your mind off of this next period case.
- [49:35]
A
That's what I need. Instead of reading books about choke points and stuff, I need something to tune out.
- [49:40]
B
Well, check it out. You'll enjoy it. It's quite a bit of fun. It's very well shot. I mean, there's no surprises. It's your classic old story we all read in childhood, so enjoy it. All right. Hopefully we'll get you back on the show again soon and it's been a real pleasure talking to you.
- [49:59]
A
Thank you Kaiser. I've really enjoyed it. Good to hear your voice and keep up the good work.
- [50:04]
B
Thank you. You've been listening to the cynical podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo. Support the show through substack@www.sinicapodcast.com where you will find a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio. Or email me@cinekapodmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin Madison's center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thanks to my guest Finbar Birmingham of the scmp. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Take care.
- [50:50]
A
It.