China’s largest and most global players in the automotive chips sector came to be Chinese through acquisition. Some of these acquisitions may have struggled to go through in today’s climate, but the fact they were done earlier shows some foresight on these Chinese companies’ part. At the same time, in fields like autonomous driving, homegrown companies are rising.
The acquired companies are in a good position to take advantage of the growing EV and AV industries, but the home grown companies may struggle to compete with the size and scale of their foreign counterparts.
Nexperia, ISSI, and Omnivision have all kept their HQs in their respective home countries, but are concurrently operating strong R&D or manufacturing facilities in China—and in my experience Chinese owners are rarely hands off. ISSI and Omnivision have design teams in China, whereas Nexperia operates packaging R&D on the mainland.
There is nothing nefarious about this, it is quite normal and makes sense. But technical know-how is transferred naturally as part of the work process, so even if these companies switch owners in the future I expect some skills and knowledge will have been transferred to Chinese employees.
https://pathofex.com/where-china-is-gearing-up-in-automotive-semiconductors-%c2%b7-technode/
For years, U.S. investigators found tampering in products made by Super Micro Computer Inc. The company says it was never told. Neither was the public.
Former U.S. officials and corporate security executives say Chinese operatives tampered with Super Micro Computer's products by placing added chips loaded with malicious code on an unknown number of motherboards.
Once installed in servers and shipped to Supermicro customers, the added chips sent beacons back to China and created an opening for malware to be installed undetected.