China, the world’s biggest maker of solar panels, is preparing to set anti-dumping duties on imports of the raw material used to make the equipment after determining it was sold below cost, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has completed probes that determined the US and EU are subsidizing producers of polysilicon and that imports of the commodity harmed domestic companies, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The ministry is holding off on setting duties until the EU issues its ruling on anti-dumping tariffs against Chinese-made solar equipment, which will be a factor in China’s decision, the people said.
The EU plans to levy tariffs of as much as 67.9 percent on solar panels from China, with the measures to be announced by June 6, a commerce official from the bloc, who asked not to be identified, said this month. The US began a probe against Chinese manufacturers in 2011 and the EU in September last year after falling solar equipment prices led to the collapse of companies including Fremont, California-based Solyndra LLC.
China’s import tax could be high as “the EU situation that we face is not positive,” Lian Rui, a Beijing-based analyst at research company NPD Solarbuzz, said by telephone yesterday.
Chinese producers of polysilicon, including GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd (保利協鑫能源). and Daqo New Energy Corp, (大全新能源) will benefit, he said.
Shares of GCL-Poly jumped as much as 3.2 percent to HK$1.93, the highest intraday price since March 13, and traded at HK$1.91 in Hong Kong as of 11:53am local time. Daqo rose 16 percent to close at US$6.44 in New York on Wednesday.
China responded by starting probes against the US in July last year and the EU in November to determine if producers of polysilicon from those regions, such as Hemlock Semiconductor Corp of the US and Germany’s Wacker Chemie AG, were dumping the material.
“If there are no loopholes, Chinese duties would boost polysilicon prices to about US$20 a kilogram,” Lian said.
The average spot price of the commodity fell to US$17.26 a kilogram as of May 6, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
China imported 83,000 metric tonnes of polysilicon last year, 32 percent more than domestic production output, Liu Jing, an analyst from the China Nonferrous Metals Industrial Association, a trade group that advises the government, said in a report on April 28.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day