Among Taiwan's optics and semiconductor equipment suppliers, delivery times for materials have stretched to several months, and some companies have even lost orders as a result. Yet nowhere has any export ban that might explain this been officially announced. According to a Nikkei Asia report published August 20, 2026, China has been quietly delaying customs clearance procedures for germanium and quartz-based materials bound for Taiwan since 2025. Under conventional export controls, where a public notice specifies the targeted items and effective date, importing companies can prepare by building up inventory or securing alternative suppliers. This "silent restriction," which takes no formal regulatory shape, is designed precisely to deny the other side any clear target to respond to—and that is exactly where its effectiveness lies.
What Nikkei Asia reported about customs delays for Taiwan-bound germanium and quartz
According to the August 20, 2026 report by Nikkei Asia journalists Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, Chinese customs authorities have, since 2025, been effectively stalling clearance for germanium-based materials, quartz-based materials, and certain rare-earth magnets exported to Taiwan. The methods include prolonged inspections and procedural measures such as summoning suppliers for questioning about their customers and shipping destinations. The impact extends to Taiwan's optics, semiconductor equipment, and aerospace suppliers. At one semiconductor equipment company facing restricted quartz material supplies, product delivery times have stretched by several months, and some optics companies have reportedly lost orders. No official notice has ever been issued formally announcing these measures as regulatory actions.
The report is based on testimony from anonymous industry sources, and does not include tallies of delay durations, dollar figures, or the names of affected companies. Outlets including DigiTimes and Taiwan News followed up with their own coverage, but these largely echoed the content of the Nikkei Asia report without adding new information, and the companies involved remain unnamed throughout. China's Ministry of Commerce has not offered official comment in any of the reports.
On August 25, Tom's Hardware reported that this trend also extends to robotics supply chains. However, of the three categories of delayed materials, only rare-earth magnets—specifically neodymium-based magnet materials used in precision motors—affect the robotics industry. Germanium and quartz do not directly impact robot production.
Why regulations without public notice are harder to counter than regulations with one
Paradoxically, a formal export control notice gives the other side time to dig in. Because the targeted items and effective date are specified, importers can stockpile inventory before the deadline, rush to qualify alternative suppliers, and governments can begin considering filing complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO) or preparing countermeasures. Even China's December 2024 germanium export ban against the United States, while damaging, handed the other side the very information needed to begin responding.
Prolonged inspections and demands for additional documentation undermine this entire framework. Since customs authorities in any country have the authority to conduct inspections and verify documents, individual procedural actions are indistinguishable on the surface from legitimate administrative conduct. Because no written prohibition order exists anywhere, even proving the fact that "restrictions have been imposed" becomes difficult, leaving no clear target for lawsuits or retaliatory tariffs. Among the various tactics that governments have flagged and warned against as economic coercion, customs discretion is a particularly difficult one to trace.
Trade statistics also show no sharp break. Shipments are merely delayed, not stopped. Dips in monthly statistics can be explained away by demand fluctuations or seasonal factors, which is precisely why the Nikkei Asia report contains no tally of delay durations or dollar amounts—there simply are no official figures capturing this phenomenon beyond anonymous testimony. What remains for companies is materials that may arrive at an unknown time, and customers to whom delivery dates can no longer be promised.
On the ground in procurement, this uncertainty functions like a fixed cost. With an outright export ban, the decision to switch to alternative sourcing can be made immediately; but a delay that "might clear customs next month" postpones that decision, leaving production plans and delivery commitments to customers hanging in limbo the entire time. Even calculating how much safety stock to hold becomes impossible without knowing the distribution of delay durations. The lost orders reported in the coverage are the outcome of this state of suspension persisting for months.
This tactic has a precedent from 16 years ago. In September 2010, immediately after the fishing boat collision incident near the Senkaku Islands, rare earth shipments from China to Japan stalled at the customs stage. The Chinese government consistently denied that any export ban existed, yet Japanese procurement operations were unable to secure the materials. By contrast, when Japan, the United States, and the EU filed a WTO complaint in 2012 against China's rare earth export quota system—which did involve public notices and quantity limits—China's loss was confirmed in 2014. Regulations with a formal shape could be contested in court, but the shapeless customs stoppage never allowed the parties involved to even identify what "measure" they were supposed to challenge.
A three-year staircase of export controls, from licensing to a whistleblower system
China's export controls on critical minerals have expanded in scope and method roughly every six months since 2023, broadening both the targeted countries and the tactics used. Arranging events chronologically based on summaries from the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and other sources reveals a clear staircase structure. This timeline is the reason the Taiwan-bound delays cannot be treated as an isolated incident.
| Timing | Measure |
|---|---|
| Effective August 1, 2023 | Introduced export licensing system for gallium and germanium |
| December 3, 2024 | Banned exports of gallium, germanium, antimony, and others to the U.S. |
| Announced December 31, 2024 | Revised and expanded the list of export-controlled items (effective January 1, 2025) |
| From 2025 | Customs delays for germanium and quartz-based materials bound for Taiwan (subject of this report) |
| November 9, 2025 | Suspended the export ban on the U.S. until November 27, 2026 |
| January 6, 2026 | Strengthened dual-use controls targeting Japan (effective immediately) |
| February 24, 2026 | Added 40 Japanese companies and organizations to the export control list and watch list |
| Announced June 24, 2026, effective July 1 | Introduced a whistleblower system for dual-use violations of strategic minerals (expanding monitoring across the entire supply chain) |
The methods have escalated from restrictive licensing review, through bans targeting specific countries, to a system that draws in society as a whole for surveillance. The whistleblower system that took effect in July 2026 encourages companies and individuals within China to report violations, elevating the unit of monitoring from individual export procedures to the entire supply chain. The customs delays affecting Taiwan-bound shipments represent a step wedged partway up this staircase—one that carries no public notice.
A similar sequence was observed when the licensing system was introduced in August 2023. First came confusion at the level of administrative discretion, in the form of delayed export licensing reviews; 16 months later, in December 2024, this culminated in the formal measure of a full export ban against the United States. There is no official information at this point confirming whether the Taiwan-bound delays are a precursor following the same two-stage pattern. However, there is already a precedent for what happens if the measure does become formalized.
For antimony, which was included in the U.S. export ban, metal prices nearly doubled from $8.91 per pound in July 2024 to $17.50 per pound by November—equivalent to roughly $38,600 per ton (approximately ¥6.15 million, based on an exchange rate of ¥159.29/$1 as of August 25, 2026; the same rate applies throughout this article)—after the licensing system was announced in August 2024. This movement was recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as market data from Argus Media Group. The U.S. export ban itself, imposed four months later, was suspended on November 9, 2025, with a deadline of November 27, 2026. The same hands that can drive prices up also hold the discretion to ease them.
Germanium: an optics-industry chokepoint, with China said to control over 60% of global supply
Germanium is one of the few materials transparent to infrared light, used in lenses for thermal cameras and night-vision devices, as an additive to adjust the refractive index of optical fibers, as a substrate for high-efficiency solar cells on satellites, and as a material for silicon-germanium (SiGe) semiconductors used in high-speed communication chips. Nikkei Asia's identification of optics and aerospace as affected industries reflects this composition of end uses. For Taiwanese optics suppliers, unpredictable delivery times for lens materials translate directly into halted product shipments.
Infrared optics is also a textbook case of dual-use technology. Night-vision devices and thermal cameras are core components of security equipment, and the framework China used in its January 2026 tightening of controls targeting Japan was likewise "dual-use." The fact that Nikkei Asia listed aerospace among the affected industries shows that these delays touch on both civilian delivery-schedule problems and security-related supply concerns.
Supply is heavily concentrated in China. In an August 25 article, Tom's Hardware journalist Anton Shilov noted that China controls approximately 63% of global germanium supply, combining metal and dioxide forms. USGS's 2025 Mineral Commodity Summaries likewise identifies China as the world's largest producer and exporter as of 2024. However, the same USGS report notes that global production data is limited because many producers do not disclose figures, making such estimates difficult to verify—meaning the 63% figure rests on this limited dataset.
Concentration in refining matters more than the distribution of mines. Germanium is primarily produced as a byproduct of sulfide ores such as zinc and of lignite, recovered during processes like zinc smelting. Because standalone mine development cannot easily increase output, supply becomes concentrated in countries that have the recovery facilities. Canada's Teck Resources structuring its expansion plans as investment in the Trail smelter rather than in mining reflects exactly this structure.
According to the same USGS report, 2024 average annual prices reached $2,100/kg (approximately ¥334,500) for metal and $1,400/kg (approximately ¥223,000) for dioxide, both up 50-60% from the previous year. The United States relies on net imports for over 50% of its consumption, and it was against this backdrop that the December 2024 export ban against the U.S. took effect. Under the licensing system, China's germanium metal exports—from the world's largest exporting country—fell 55% year-on-year to 16,700 kg, or 16.7 tons, during January-August 2024. In a market of this size, when goods are held up at customs in the largest supplying country, there simply isn't enough market depth elsewhere to make up the shortfall the following month. The multi-month delays that Taiwanese suppliers reported are also a consequence of this structure.
The two-layer twist that lets import-dependent China squeeze Taiwan on quartz
Regarding quartz, there is a seemingly contradictory fact. Chinese industry media themselves acknowledge that China relies heavily on imports from the U.S. and Norway for high-purity quartz sand, the raw material used in semiconductor crucibles and glass components. The world's purest and highest-volume deposit is located in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, and semiconductor manufacturers continue to use this sand precisely because of its low impurity levels. Looking only at the flow of raw materials, China appears closer to being the squeezed party than the squeezing one.
The fact that this same China can apply pressure on Taiwan through quartz can be understood by recognizing that the quartz market has two distinct faces—upstream and downstream. Upstream is high-purity quartz sand as raw material, where China sits on the buying side, dependent on imports. Downstream is the market for finished products made by melting and shaping that sand into fused quartz glass—components such as crucibles, diffusion furnace reaction tubes, and jigs that support wafers. Turning the Nikkei Asia report of real damage in Taiwan from stalled quartz-based materials on its head, it follows that Taiwan's manufacturing operations rely to a meaningful degree on supply from China at this layer.
Fused quartz glass is a consumable component embedded throughout semiconductor manufacturing. In high-temperature processes that cannot tolerate impurities, reaction tubes and boats placed near wafers require materials that combine heat resistance with purity—a combination few materials offer—making quartz the de facto standard for high-temperature processes such as diffusion and oxidation. Because these components are meant to be replaced regularly, a supply disruption lasting several months directly affects factory operating schedules.
Neither the Nikkei Asia report nor the follow-up coverage specifies whether the targeted materials are raw sand or finished glass products—all simply describe them as "quartz-based materials." Still, market structure suggests a likely answer. Restricting raw sand bound for Taiwan would have limited effect, since China itself depends on imports for that material; but restricting finished glass would affect only Taiwan's manufacturing operations. While this cannot be confirmed definitively, the structural logic pointing toward the downstream layer being the effective target remains solid.
The absence of any public notice on targeted items compounds this ambiguity. It means that even the specific product classification that "quartz-based" refers to cannot be identified or shared by those affected. The characteristic of this tactic—withholding from the other side the very information needed to respond—remains consistent in leaving the target itself undefined. And given that the supply of raw sand is concentrated in Spruce Pine, this twist also reflects China's own vulnerability: the squeezing party can itself be squeezed.
Displaced demand likely heading toward Umicore and Japanese quartz glass makers
Losses on the squeezed side surface as demand on the unsqueezed side. Order losses were reported in Taiwan's optics industry, while delivery delays and supply disruptions have also been reported in equipment and aerospace sectors. Demand with nowhere else to go shifts elsewhere in the supply chain, and the likely destinations are already taking shape.
For germanium, Belgium's Umicore stands out as the frontrunner. Recycled secondary raw materials account for over 50% of the company's supply, giving it a procurement structure less dependent on Chinese ore. Canada's Teck Resources has announced plans to invest up to CAD 850 million, conditions permitting, to double capacity at its Trail smelter. On the materials-substitution front, U.S.-based LightPath Technologies offers "BlackDiamond," a germanium-free infrared optical material; the company reported revenue of $12.2 million (approximately ¥1.94 billion) for the April-June 2025 quarter, up 40% year-on-year, and holds an exclusive license with the U.S. Department of Defense.
For quartz, the opportunity may pass to Japanese manufacturers. Companies with long track records supplying fused quartz glass, such as Shin-Etsu Quartz Products and Tosoh, are geographically and experientially plausible candidates if Taiwanese equipment and device manufacturers seek alternatives to Chinese-made crucibles and reaction tubes. No public information currently indicates an increase in inquiries from Taiwan—this remains an inference drawn from market structure—but if the restricted material is indeed finished glass products rather than raw sand, Japan sits closest on the map of alternative supply.
The same tactic's aim has already begun turning toward Japan as well. On January 6, 2026, dual-use controls targeting Japan were tightened, effective immediately, and on February 24, a total of 40 Japanese companies and organizations were added to the export control list and watch list. Chinese-origin materials have also made their way into Japan's procurement chains—USGS data shows that 6% of China's germanium metal exports during January-August 2024 were bound for Japan. Overlaying the trend of tightening controls with this procurement relationship suggests the groundwork already exists for extending the tactic being tested at Taiwan's customs to Japan as well.
Applying the 16-month precedent between the introduction of the licensing system and the full export ban against the U.S., an answer should emerge before too long as to whether the Taiwan-bound delays that began in 2025 evolve into a formal, publicly announced regulation. The treatment of the U.S. export ban suspension, which expires on November 27, 2026, will serve as an early preview. An extension would signal a decision to preserve discretionary latitude; a reinstatement would signal another step up the staircase.
Unannounced restriction strips away, along with the flow of materials, the very information the other side needs to know what to respond to. By the time trade statistics show a clear anomaly, the real damage—missed delivery dates and lost orders—has already accumulated. Conversely, the thicker the alternative supply network grows, spanning Umicore, Teck, and Japanese quartz glass makers, the more quietly this tactic's effectiveness will erode. The delays now occurring at China's customs offices are the opening round of that war of attrition.