Wingtech says core of Nexperia’s China unit now based on mainland

China’s Wingtech Technology says it has developed an independent management operation for Nexperia’s Chinese unit, in a bid to insulate the local business as it fights to regain control of the Dutch chipmaker. Wingtech chairwoman Ruby Yang Mu said on Friday that the core management, research and development and production teams at Nexperia China were now fully based in the country and possessed “complete operational decision-making authority”. “Today I am confident to say that Nexperia China has largely established an independent operating system,” Yang said at an annual summit on Friday hosted by JW Insights, a Chinese chip industry consultancy. According to Yang, the Chinese unit’s production capacity and delivery capabilities were recovering steadily as it built out a full-stack supply chain designed to operate on a dual model of “China for China” and “China for global”. “We believe that the more turbulent the times, the more crucial it is to have a solid foundation,” Yang said. Her remarks come amid an ongoing dispute that erupted late last year between Netherlands-based Nexperia and its Chinese arm. Following an intervention by the Dutch government to block the chipmaker from shifting its operations to China, Nexperia China declared independence from the Dutch headquarters, prompting Nexperia Europe to halt wafer shipments to China. In the latest escalation, Wingtech said last week that it had filed a lawsuit in a court in China’s southern Guangdong province against Nexperia and three of its executives. The suit demands the restoration of full corporate control and 8 billion yuan (US$1.18 billion) in compensation. Yang’s report on the progress of Nexperia China’s independence coincided with a wave of optimism from other Chinese chip leaders at Friday’s summit, who hailed the industry’s resilience against US export controls and the shifting market landscape driven by artificial intelligence. Chen Nanxiang, chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association and head of memory giant Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), highlighted Huawei Technologies’ Tau Scaling Law introduced earlier this week. The new semiconductor principle aims to bypass traditional chip manufacturing limits to deliver advanced, high-end chips with a transistor density equivalent to a cutting-edge 1.4-nanometer processing node by 2031. Chen urged domestic chip professionals to “shoulder the banner of the emerging pillar industries”. He noted that the domestic sector was seeing renewed hope after weathering the initial disruptions brought by the AI boom. Chen, who has led YMTC since 2021, sometimes speaks on behalf of the trade group but rarely under his title at the Wuhan-based company, which is pursuing a mega-listing on Shanghai’s Star Market. In a paper published in March during the country’s top-level two sessions political meetings, Chen and other top executives from China’s largest chipmakers – including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, known as SMIC – jointly called for a nationwide push to build a domestic competitor to Dutch chip equipment giant ASML. Xu Hongxing, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at the event on Friday that the “most difficult times are over” for China’s semiconductor industry. He pointed to a jump in chip exports during the first few months of 2026 as a “glorious moment” for the industry.