Supply Chain Serfdom

Supply Chain Serfdom

The Nexperia crisis and the new serfdom of global supply chains

The seizure of Nexperia by the Dutch government last week marks a turning point not only in trade policy but in the moral and philosophical struggle of our age: sovereignty versus submission, freedom versus control, nations of men versus hives of drones. The technocrats and economists may frame it as a “trade dispute” or a “supply chain disruption,” but it is, in truth, a revelation of character.

China has shown us what it truly is: a mercantile despotism that thrives on dependence. When the Netherlands dared to assert its national interest to prevent Chinese-controlled firms from siphoning critical semiconductor technology, the response from Beijing was immediate, vindictive, and totalitarian. Rather than negotiation, they chose punishment. Rather than competition, coercion. Like an abusive tyrant, China’s first instinct when resisted was not dialogue, but blackmail: strangling its own factories, weaponizing its exports, and threatening the world with scarcity to enforce obedience.

For thirty years, the West’s ruling class preached that globalization was peace, that trade made tyranny obsolete. They outsourced their conscience to the marketplace and called it moral progress. Now we see the result: factories hollowed out, intellectual property stolen, and a generation of Western engineers replaced by middlemen who cannot repair what they design. Dependency was not a byproduct; it was the goal. The Chinese Communist Party understood that control over production meant control over civilization itself. The West thought it could tame the dragon with spreadsheets. Instead, it built the dragon’s hoard and now begs to access its treasure, hoisting itself with its own petard.

The Nexperia crisis is not an anomaly; it is the natural outcome of surrender. Every nation that surrendered its factories for quarterly profit now finds itself shackled to Beijing’s whims. A single executive order from a bureaucrat in Zhongnanhai can now halt entire assembly lines in Bavaria, Lyon, or Detroit. The machine stops because the master commands it.

China’s propaganda speaks in the dialect of cooperation and mutual benefit, but the reality is a doctrine of control. Their Belt and Road Initiative is not philanthropy but tributary vassalage. Their export policies are not commerce but coercion disguised as diplomacy. When China bans rare earth exports or semiconductor shipments, it does not do so as an act of defense, but domination. It treats the arteries of global trade as its personal weapon, a tourniquet on the world’s neck.

This is what the Western ruling class refuses to admit: authoritarian regimes cannot coexist with free markets. Free exchange presupposes trust, and trust cannot exist when one side operates under secrecy, surveillance, and state control. Beijing understands this perfectly and exploits it.

The Dutch government’s decision to seize Nexperia is not merely a bureaucratic act; it is an act of civilizational self-defense. It is the first flicker of a Western nation remembering that sovereignty is not xenophobia, and control over one’s industry is not “protectionism.” It is sanity. Freedom begins with control over your own production. A nation that cannot make its own semiconductors is as helpless as a knight without a sword. The West, in its delusion, has traded its swords for trinkets and now finds itself surrounded by blacksmiths who answer to Beijing.

If Europe, America, and their allies are to remain free, they must relearn the ancient lesson of self-sufficiency. To produce is to be sovereign; to depend is to be ruled. The very concept of liberty must be extended beyond politics and into material reality, into energy, technology, manufacturing, and supply.

The issue is not merely economic; it is moral. China’s system is built on surveillance, censorship, and obedience to the state. The West’s is supposed to be built on conscience, liberty, and responsibility. To buy from China while pretending to defend freedom is moral schizophrenia. You cannot proclaim human rights while funding slave labor. You cannot condemn authoritarianism while renting it by the container-load.

To those who say, “We cannot afford to decouple,” I say: you cannot afford to remain chained. The path to independence is costly, but the price of servitude is ruin.

We must reclaim production and bring home the factories. Subsidize independence, not dependency. Every vital technology, chips, energy systems, defense components, must be within the reach of free nations. We must destroy the illusion of neutral trade. There is no such thing as neutral trade with tyrants. Every transaction with an authoritarian state strengthens its hand. Trade must be moral, not merely profitable. We must revive the virtue of endurance. We must be willing to suffer temporary scarcity to reclaim permanent freedom. Luxury has dulled the Western will. The crisis is not only industrial but spiritual. A free people must be able to endure discomfort without surrender.

The Nexperia crisis is not about chips; it is about chains. It is about whether the West will live as free craftsmen or serve as compliant consumers. China’s rulers have mastered the art of manipulation through dependence. Their power grows each time we trade resilience for convenience. This is the hour for the West to rediscover its moral backbone. Let the Chinese Communist Party learn that the free world cannot be blackmailed, and that sovereignty, once remembered, is contagious. Freedom cannot coexist with dependence. Sovereignty cannot coexist with submission. Either we take back our industries, our technologies, and our dignity, or we will continue to be ruled not by kings or emperors, but by supply chains.