Bloomberg: Netherlands turns hawkish on China as EU splits

Europe doesn’t seem to share Washington’s fear of a dangerous China, but the Netherlands is changing its tune and rethinking its ties with Beijing, one of its biggest trading partners.

Just after Emmanuel Macron visited the Netherlands to say that the EU should stay out of any possible clash between Beijing and Washington, the Dutch intelligence agency issued what was effectively a retort, warning, “China is the biggest threat to the Dutch economic security.”

Beijing, of course, wasn’t pleased.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin shot back that “relevant officials” should “stop making a big deal out of the so-called China threat story”, Bloomberg reports.

While the EU wants to reduce its reliance on Chinese goods, Germany and Germany both say they don’t want to cut off from China. Macron, in particular, has been pushing for a more independent European foreign policy amid doubts about relations with the US.

But it will take more than a state visit to convince the Netherlands of that idea. Last month, Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said China would face trouble if it sent weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine, just days after Prime Minister Mark Rutte dismissed Beijing’s rise: “I don’t see how this will be China’s century.”

The political tensions are also affecting trade ties, as the Netherlands — where chip machine giant ASML is based — has agreed to join the US effort to limit exports of chip technology to China.

That followed revelations that a former China-based worker had stolen secret information from ASML. But not all the Dutch are convinced. Arjen Lubach, who hosts a late-night satirical news show, joked that Biden swayed Rutte by allowing him to sit behind his desk in the Oval Office earlier this year.

Stuck in the middle of the growing political tensions, ASML’s boss Peter Wennink has pushed back against some of the limits on his company’s business in China. This week, ASML reported a significant pickup of revenue from China, but some of those sales may eventually be affected by the export limits.

Still, at the end of the day, national security worries won over businesses. “We want to make sure,” Rutte said earlier this year, “that we keep the leading edge” in the chip sector in Europe and the US.