Can anyone confirm that the function to collate and export .fdf files into CSV format does not support asian character sets in any circumstance?

I have an application built around a csv export from fdf files that is then read into a scripted PDf for report generation. Trouble is, if the fdf fields contain asian character sets - these are not UTF8 (or anything else) encoded in the output csv file. Tried changing the Interface language to Chinese - but still does not work. XML exports are properly encoded - but there is no XML export option from .fdf files only from .pdf. Clearly the .fdf can be converted back to .pdf's and I could convert the reporting engine input to XML - but trying to avoid a great deal of work for nothing. Surely should be supported automatically - hoping there is some setting that I have missed. Thanks