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The ‘Chinese owner’ of Nexperia: How Zhang Xuezheng’s tech empire fell to geopolitics
(www.thinkchina.sg)
It's an interesting subject. If not for Beijing's heavy hand, could Chinese internet companies have flourished much more and become international tech giants? Maybe, but there is one obvious counterpoint: where are the European tech giants? In an open playing field, it looks like American tech giants are pretty good at buying out or simply crushing any nascent competitors. If the Chinese did not have their censorship or great firewall, maybe the situation would have been like Europe, where the government tries to impose some rules, but doesn't really have much traction, and everyone just ends up using Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.
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.