Tag: Netherlands

The Many Challenges Facing Apple

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For more than a decade, Apple could do almost no wrong. The iPhone made it the world’s most valuable company. The App Store helped launch businesses such as Uber and Airbnb. And the company’s new products made it a player in health, Hollywood and finance. Now, the difficulties are piling up. The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday for giving its own products advantages that it deprived rivals of having. The suit is the latest in a series of actions brought against the company by regulators…

ASML halts hi-tech chip-making exports to China reportedly after US request

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A Dutch manufacturer has cancelled shipments of hi-tech microchip machinery to China after pressure from the US government, it has been reported. ASML, which is a key firm in the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, was due to export three chip-making machines to China but had its export licences revoked by the Dutch government before they were shipped. The company is one of the only manufacturers of extreme ultraviolet lithography systems (EUVs), which use lasers to help create the circuits for chips. The advanced technology is used by leading chip…

The Multimillion-Dollar Machines at the Center of the U.S.-China Rivalry

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They are smooth white boxes, roughly the size of large cargo vans, and they are now at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese technology conflict. As the United States tries to slow China’s progress toward technological advances that could help its military, the complex lithography machines that print intricate circuitry on computer chips have become a key choke point. The machines are central to China’s efforts to develop its own chip-making industry, but China does not yet have the technology to make them, at least in their most advanced forms. This…

Explainer: China’s covert overseas ‘police stations’

Chin@Strategy

The FBI this week arrested two men accused of running a covert overseas police operation in New York on behalf of Chinese authorities. The charges followed a raid on a Fujianese community centre in Chinatown in October 2022. Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, both US citizens, are accused of using the premises to run an “unofficial police station”. Police in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada have opened investigations into similar allegations in their countries. On Wednesday, Chris Philp, a UK home office minister, said the outposts were “of…

Chip war: Japan and Netherlands expected to join US in ban on tech exports to China

Chin@Strategy

A Washington official has made the most direct comments by a US authority to date acknowledging the existence of a deal with Japan and the Netherlands for those countries to impose new restrictions on exports of chipmaking tools to China. “We can’t talk about the deal right now,” said Don Graves, deputy commerce department secretary, on the sidelines of an event in Washington. “But you can certainly talk to our friends in Japan and the Netherlands.” Bloomberg reported on Friday an agreement had been finalised and two people familiar with…

Netherlands and Japan Said to Join U.S. in Curbing China’s Access to Chip Tech

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Netherlands and Japan, both makers of some of the world’s most advanced equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, agreed on Friday to join with the United States in barring some shipments of their most high-tech machinery to China, people familiar with the agreement said. The agreement, which followed high-level meetings with U.S. national security officials in Washington, will help expand the reach of sweeping restrictions issued unilaterally by the Biden administration in October on the kinds of semiconductor technology that can be shared with China. The countries did not…

Dutch Are Investigating Reported Illegal Chinese Police Stations

Chin@Strategy

The Dutch government said on Wednesday that it was investigating reports that Chinese law enforcement agencies illegally operate offices in the Netherlands — without Dutch knowledge or approval — to police Chinese citizens overseas. The Chinese embassy in the Netherlands said it was “not aware” of and “not involved” with the offices described in the reports. “China’s judicial and law-enforcement authorities strictly abide by international rules and fully respect the judicial sovereignty of other countries,” it said in a statement. The exchange came after the Dutch broadcaster RTL Nieuws and…

China using illegal police bases in Netherlands to target dissidents, say reports

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The Dutch government has said it is investigating reports that Chinese police forces have illegally opened at least two stations in the Netherlands since 2018, using them in part to keep tabs and put pressure on overseas dissidents. An investigation by RTL Nieuws and Follow the Money said the “overseas service stations” in Amsterdam and Rotterdam ostensibly served an administrative purpose, allowing Chinese nationals to renew driving licences and change their civil status. But the two outlets also spoke to Chinese critics of the Beijing regime living in the Netherlands…

HRT: inside the complex global supply chain behind a $20bn market

Chin@Strategy

In the centre of the factory stand 31 reactors: giant metal globes that can hold up to 10,000 litres of liquid each. Every week, gleaming stainless steel drums arrive by truck at this plant on the outskirts of Oss, in the Netherlands. Their contents are poured into the reactors through a funnel, dissolved, and then heated to boiling point. Standing by one of the vast containers, the factory manager, Robert Dam, compares it to a “cooking pot”. Peering inside, we can see the light liquid bubbling away. At Dam’s factory,…