A Chinese citizen was arrested in Belgium on suspicion of stealing semiconductor technology.

According to reports, in May this year wall street journalRecently, Belgian authorities detained a Chinese citizen suspected of illegally obtaining technical information on the production of semiconductor components with the purpose of further transferring it to China. He was arrested two days before flying to Beijing.

According to investigators, the 52-year-old Chinese citizen, who also holds Belgian citizenship, held a senior position in the bankrupt local company BelGaN until 2024, which is related to the production of gallium nitride-based power semiconductors. Such components are particularly important to the Chinese economy given the rapid growth of the electric vehicle industry and data center infrastructure, as gallium nitride can significantly improve the efficiency of power subsystems in energy-intensive electronic equipment. In addition, such power electronic devices are also important for the defense and aerospace sectors.

BelGaN acquired its Belgian business from ON Semiconductor, a multinational company headquartered in the United States. As Belgian investigators pointed out, the suspect in this case founded a Chinese company shortly after obtaining a high-level position at BelGaN and illegally transferred trade secrets and intellectual property rights to the company. The investigation is still looking for a second suspect in the case. According to Belgian intelligence services, Chinese investors are often willing to invest in local companies’ operations in the technology sector in order to copy valuable technologies obtained through such cooperation.

It is alleged that technology may have been stolen from neighboring the Netherlands in the early 2000s, allowing Chinese companies to illegally borrow the intellectual property rights of ASML, the world’s largest supplier of lithography scanners for wafer production, to manufacture products. The experience of 2022 appears to have prompted Dutch authorities to take aggressive action in the Nexperia case, last year when they effectively seized Nexperia’s assets, triggering a conflict with a Chinese subsidiary specializing in the production of automotive semiconductor parts. Disruptions in the supply chain for core products have impacted jobs across the global automotive industry.