Dutch chip sector at very high risk of Chinese interference, government-funded study warns — calls for stricter vetting at sites like ASML

The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies has rated the Dutch semiconductor industry as being at very high risk of Chinese foreign interference in a recent report, placing it above the maritime and aerospace sectors, and citing years of espionage against ASML and NXP. Written by Benedetta Girardi and Hans Horan for the China Knowledge Network, a body funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the study calls for stricter vetting of personnel at sensitive chip sites and a public-private fund to swap out high-risk foreign hardware, including server motherboards and baseboard management controllers. Both authors expanded on the findings in interviews with Nikkei Asia last week.

The report sorts Beijing’s methods into five categories: economic statecraft, digital and information operations, physical interference, legal pressure, and talent-based technological espionage. ASML said in 2023 that a former China-based employee stole data about its lithography tools from an internal product lifecycle management system, one of several insider theft cases at the company stretching back to 2015, and the Dutch military intelligence service MIVD named all three sectors as Chinese espionage targets in its 2024 annual report.

China restricted rare earth exports through 2025, and ASML’s complex optical systems depend on those materials. The EU holds an anti-coercion instrument designed to counter economic blackmail by non-member states, but leaders treat it as a last resort. The tool was “created with China in mind,” Benedetta Girardi, program coordinator of the HCSS Europe in the Indo-Pacific program, told Nikkei Asia.

Dutch anti-discrimination law prohibits screening policies that target only Chinese nationals, and the standard VOG background certificate doesn’t account for an applicant’s conduct or connections outside the EU. The report proposes a tiered system instead, whereby companies identify their “he Hague Centre for Strategic Studies has rated the Dutch semiconductor industry as being at very high risk of Chinese foreign interferencejewels” and apply deeper screening, weighing factors such as susceptibility to blackmail or bribery, to staff with direct access, while junior hires and contractors get lighter checks.

A proposed resilience fund, built with the EU and NATO, would pay to replace equipment such as server motherboards, BMCs, and large ship-to-shore cranes with European-made equivalents. The mechanism would sit alongside Project Beethoven, the €2.5 billion Dutch government effort to expand domestic semiconductor production capacity, and would include surge funding that unlocks during crises such as sanctions escalation or major cyber campaigns.

ASML denied a U.S. government concern in June that one of its EUV machines had reached China in breach of export controls, telling Tom’s Hardware the claims were baseless and harmful to its reputation.

The Nexperia dispute, in which the Dutch government seized the chipmaker from its Chinese parent, and Beijing responded by blocking exports from its Guangdong site, played out while the report was being written. In a crisis such as a confrontation over Taiwan, the researchers assess that Chinese leverage over strategic industries would likely constrain Dutch policy choices and limit participation in allied responses.