(Yicai) July 10 -- China will continue to impose countervailing duties on optical fiber preforms, which are quartz glass rods with a specific refractive index that are used to make optical fibers, from the US and Japan until 2029 to protect a fragile domestic industry from further damage caused by the dumping of imported products from the two countries.

The tax rates on optical fiber preforms imported from Japan will remain at between 14.4 percent and 31.2 percent, and those from the US will stay at between 17.4 percent and 41.7 percent effective from tomorrow, the Ministry of Commerce said today.

China first imposed anti-dumping duties on Japanese and US optical fiber preforms in August 2015, raising tariffs on Japanese imports to between 8 percent and 9.1 percent, and on US imports to between 17.4 percent and 41.7 percent. In 2020, it further hiked taxes on Japanese imports to between 14.1 percent and 31.2 percent.

In April last year, the Ministry of Commerce received applications from industry representatives to conduct another review of the countervailing duties. The results of the probe showed that China is the world’s largest market for optical fiber preforms.

Between 2018 and 2022, China accounted for an average of 59 percent of global demand. In 2022, China bought 10,524 tons of preforms, in 2021 it purchased 10,112 tons, in 2020 8,848 tons, in 2019 9,164 tons and in 2018 9,688 tons.

Both Japan and the US have excess capacity, making the large Chinese market very appealing. Over the five-year period, Japan’s idle capacity each year was around 11.4 percent of China’s annual demand, and in the US, it was around 15.4 percent each year.

Yet China’s optical fiber preforms industry remains fragile and unstable, and is vulnerable to the impact of imported products. The price of China-made optical fiber preforms plunged 49.9 percent in 2022 from 2018, revenue slumped 28.1 percent, pre-tax profit plummeted 74.7 percent and the number of employees shrank 12.1 percent.

Japanese optical fiber preforms accounted for 16.1 percent of all China’s imports of this product in 2022 at 3.79 tons. This is a huge difference from 2018 when Japanese imports accounted for 65.6 percent at 944.7 tons.

There has been a gradual downward trend in the last five years as the anti-dumping duties took effect. In 2021, Japanese products accounted for 74.9 percent of all such imports at 24.7 tons, in 2020, it was 83.5 percent at 362.3 tons and in 2019 it was 84 percent at 584.6 tons.

While imports of optical fiber preforms from the US plunged from 63.7 tons in 2018 to 0.2 tons in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, China did not import any preforms from the US.

Editor: Kim Taylor