The crisis surrounding the chipmaker Nexperia erupted into a war of words on Friday, with the company’s Chinese and Dutch arms trading barbs, while Beijing slammed the Dutch minister involved.

The fiery exchange, which took place over several hours late on Friday evening, will raise tensions ahead of crunch government talks in the Chinese capital next week aimed at resolving the future of the Chinese-owned, Dutch-based company that makes legacy chips vital to the automotive industry.

It shows the company’s Chinese and European arms at war, despite claims of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis last week. It also shows the searing tensions between the two countries involved, after the Dutch economy minister this week said he had no regrets over the affair.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

China’s commerce ministry responded furiously to an interview given to the Guardian newspaper by Vincent Karremans on Thursday, in which he said he would repeat his actions if he had to.

“If I had been in the same position, with the knowledge I know now, I would have done the same thing again,” the minister said, in remarks that Beijing described as “not only reckless but utterly absurd”.

“China expresses extreme disappointment and strong dissatisfaction with such remarks that confuse right and wrong, distort the truth, and act unilaterally,” the Ministry of Commerce statement said.

“The profound lesson is this is a breach of contract and an unwise and impulsive act that has stirred up a hornet’s nest and is the root cause of the turmoil and chaos in the global semiconductor supply chain.”

Nexperia’s Europe operations, meanwhile, accused its Chinese arm of “refusing to pay” for wafers shipped from Europe and for financial malpractice.

It said it “has not received any official update” that a Dutch government order that sparked the crisis had been lifted and that it “continues to act in full compliance with the Dutch government order”. This is despite media reports saying the law would be lifted imminently.

Nexperia claimed that it has continued to ship wafers to China for packaging and testing throughout the crisis and that the Dongguan operation should have enough wafers to satisfy supply for “several months”.

“Any claims from Nexperia China to the contrary lead to serious doubt over stock management practices by local management in China. Therefore, any failure to make shipments is fully the responsibility of Nexperia’s entities in China,” the statement read.

Furthermore, it said it would continue to service clients by shipping wafers directly to them, suggesting that it would bypass Nexperia in China.

Earlier on Friday, a joint letter sent by Nexperia’s nine units in China to all employees 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 missive 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”.

The saga kicked off in late September when Dutch authorities passed a law effectively ring-fencing the operation in the Netherlands from its Chinese parent company.

A week later, a Dutch court ousted the Chinese owner and CEO, citing governance issues, after which Beijing imposed export controls restricting shipments of products from Nexperia’s operations there, throwing the car supply chain into disarray.

Court documents, however, showed that the United States had exerted pressure over a period of months to remove the Chinese management, threatening to add Nexperia to an expanded blacklist.

The crisis appeared to have been averted following a meeting between the leaders of China and the US last month in South Korea, during which they announced a pause in their trade war, which also appeared to have solved the Nexperia problem.

However, the latest exchange raises questions about the sustainability of the ceasefire.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.