Once the scrappy entrepreneur who helped make smartphones affordable, Zhang Xuezheng now finds his semiconductor empire under siege. The Dutch takeover of Nexperia marks a dramatic turn in his high-tech odyssey amid global power rivalries. Was the move justified? Lianhe Zaobao’s China Desk looks into the company and its founder.
He took over a failing Dutch tech company and turned it around. Nexperia was on the path to bankruptcy, that’s why it was on the market to be sold back in 2017. His company injected capital and made it profitable. Even last year, his parent company even announced a $200M expansion of Nexperia’s Hamburg plant, which totally goes against the narrative that they were moving production out of Europe.
The Dutch govt is trying to spin this, but they have like 5 different storylines and none of them make sense.