According to CCTV Finance’s on-site visit report, many optical module manufacturers in Wuhan Optics Valley are currently operating in 24-hour three-shift production mode. The production lines are running with almost no gaps. The core driving force comes from the continuously rising demand for overseas orders. The existing production capacity is nearly full, and they can only match the delivery pace by extending the production time.
CCTV financial report footage shows that the Wuhan Optics Valley optical module production workshop is in full operation, and the automated production line is rushing to process high-end optical module orders from overseas customers:
Among them, the optical module business entity of Wuhan’s leading local enterprise has achieved high speeds of 800G and above since the beginning of 2026.
The export scale of end-optical modules has soared by more than 100 times year-on-year. This growth rate is not only far higher than the overall domestic foreign trade import and export growth rate of about 15% this year, but also far higher than the export growth rate of less than 20% for the mechanical and electrical categories. It is a rare explosive growth of sub-categories in import and export trade in the past decade.
Public data from the General Administration of Customs shows that in the first five months of 2026, my country’s cumulative exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 7.58 trillion yuan, accounting for 63.6% of the country’s total export value. It has set a new monthly export record for the same period in the past for 15 consecutive months.
Products related to the entire artificial intelligence industry chain contributed more than 50% of this year’s new increase in exports of electromechanical products, and high-speed optical modules are the segment with the most prominent growth rate.
Currently, domestic optical modules have formed three core export industry clusters in Jiangsu, Sichuan and Hubei, and the shipments of high-end products in each production area have maintained rapid growth:
From the perspective of the global market structure, domestic optical communication companies have currently captured more than 70% of the global optical module market share. For 800G and 1.6T high-end optical modules dedicated to AI data centers, the market share of domestic manufacturers has also stably exceeded 70%. Overseas established optical module companies have basically given up their order share in the mainstream datacom market and can only undertake a small number of niche telecom market orders.
In other words, most of the new AI computing computer rooms built around the world need to purchase core optical module hardware from Chinese companies. Domestic companies have the two core say in product pricing and delivery cycle.
Industry calculation data shows that the overall global shipments of 800G+1.6T high-speed optical modules will exceed 73 million units in 2026, doubling compared with 2025; the overall shipment scale will rise to 141 million units in 2027, with a growth rate of more than 70%. In 2028, 3.2T specification products will start small-scale commercial iterations, and the overall growth cycle of the track will continue until at least 2028.
At present, the overseas orders on hand of leading domestic manufacturers are generally scheduled to 2027-2028. Industry demand is relatively certain, and it will continue to become the core incremental category driving my country’s high-end industrial product exports.
