This article makes it sound like Zhang was the victim here. Short story is that he took over a Dutch Tech company, mismanaged it and took its Intellectual property to transfer it to a Chinese company, essentially gutting nexperia. The board of the company and the Dutch Chamber of Commerce intervened. Note that the Dutch government didn’t do this for political reasons, but based on the findings of the Chamber of Commerce, who intervened because of intentional bad management.
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.
But that wouldn’t make for a catchy headline, would it?


