In 2016, the American Jeff Stein, an experienced journalist specializing in the US intelligence services, received a tip: a small insurance company, specializing in the insurance coverage of his and her agents, had been sold to a Chinese company.
It was the American insurer Wright USA, which, in 2015, had been bought by the Chinese Fosun group, a private company with close ties to its government.
Stein published his research in Newsweek magazine, rightly causing concern in , because Wright USA had access to personal information of US intelligence agents and officials. By selling it to a Chinese company, it became a matter of national security.
The case of Wright USA was not an isolated incident.
China, the largest foreign investor
According to a report by BBC journalist Celia Hutton (17/11/2025) citing exclusive access to new data, Chinese state capital is not only flowing to the developing world but also to rich countries, the US, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.
Over the past twenty years, China has become the world’s largest overseas investor and a dominant player in critical technologies. Data on Chinese state investment abroad is apparently a state secret.
Documents cited by the BBC reveal that four Chinese state-owned banks provided a $1.2 billion loan so China’s Fosun Group could buy Wright USA. Shortly thereafter, the Wright USA company was sold again, to Americans. It is unclear who ordered the sale.
For the past twelve years, China’s government spending has been researched by AidData, a research center at the public university of William and Mary in the state of Virginia, (one of the oldest universities in the US founded in 1693) which specializes in tracking public spending by foreign governments.
AidData, which is funded by foreign governments and charities, reveals that since 2000, Beijing has spent $2.1 trillion overseas, split almost equally between developing and developed countries.
Some of China’s government investments in developed economies are aimed at securing high returns. Others, however, are aligned with Beijing’s strategic goals, as they were formulated ten years ago, in the context of the “Made in China 2025” initiative, the purpose of which was Beijing’s dominance, by this year (2025), in ten advanced industries, robotics, electric vehicles, semiconductors, etc.
Global concern
But because that initiative caused global concern, Beijing stopped publicly referring to it. However, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, had hinted that the “Made in China 2025” plan remained absolutely alive as a strategic direction of Chinese policy.
According to AidData data, China’s state funds are directed to countries willing to accept Chinese investment. One of them is the Netherlands, as can be seen from the case of Nexperia, a semiconductor company with Chinese interests.
The company appears in AidData’s database: China’s state-owned banks provided an $800 million loan to help a Chinese consortium acquire Nexperia in 2017. Two years later, ownership of Nexperia passed to Wingtech, also a Chinese company.
The relationship with the Netherlands
Nexperia’s strategic importance was highlighted when, last September, Dutch authorities placed the company’s operations under state control – in part, the Dutch government said, because of concerns that its technology could be transferred to other parts of Wingtech.
This practically led to the “split” of Nexperia in two – separating the company’s activities in the Netherlands, from the production unit in China. Notably, in January 2023, the Dutch public broadcaster reported that Nexperia microchips ended up in Russian military equipment, despite international sanctions against Moscow due to
of Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Be careful with investments
Many in the Netherlands were surprised by the way the Nexperia case was handled, as the country has always managed its relations with China very carefully.
The Netherlands has prospered with free trade, analysts point out, who realize that today, geopolitics is forcing more investment evaluation, something they didn’t pay as much attention to in the past.
