Great Power Technology.

Chapter 273 Nobody Can Stop Our Footsteps
In 2021, China's photovoltaic product exports will exceed 284 billion Doles, an increase of 43.7%, an increase of 2019 percentage points compared to 14.

The module shipments of China's top ten photovoltaic companies have already accounted for more than 75% of the global market share. In 2021, China's photovoltaic power generation will add 54.88GW, continuing to rank first in the world, accounting for nearly 40% of the world's newly installed capacity.

At the same time, almost all equipment, key raw materials and core technologies in China's photovoltaic industry have been independently controlled. We have almost controlled the entire supply chain of the global photovoltaic industry. Eight of the top 10 companies in the world are from China.

From the perspective of technology, our photovoltaic industrialization technology is already at the advanced level in the world, and we have begun to accelerate the deployment of cutting-edge technologies. Absolute advantage, and this is also the reason why the West dared to initiate restrictions on China's chip industry, but has been afraid to take action on China's photovoltaic industry.
-
However, 18 years ago, or even 10 years ago, China's photovoltaic industry was not in such a state of seeing all mountains and small mountains at all. Even in the face of Western trade barriers, this industry was once on the verge of annihilation of the entire industry.

It all started with a meeting many years ago.

In 1996, the World Solar Energy Summit was held in Zimbabwe, and photovoltaic power generation began to enter China's vision. At this time, there were still 7656 million people without electricity in our country. These people without electricity were concentrated in the northwest region, far away from the power grid, with small loads and scattered wide.

Among them, due to geographical reasons, the proportion of households without electricity in Tibet area is as high as 78%. If the power grid extension is used to solve this problem, it will take at least 20 years.

Photovoltaic power generation can reverse all this.

In the second year after the Zimbabwe Conference, Huaxia began to implement the Bright Project. Through solar and wind power and other power generation methods, thousands of independent power generation systems were established in the west, which solved the electricity problem of more than 700 villages in the west.

Bright Project's demand for photovoltaics created China's first generation of photovoltaic companies. Those Huaxia Solar Energy companies that later stepped onto the world stage all started from small villages in the west.

However, unlike other industries that bear the burden of humiliation, Huaxia Photovoltaic Enterprises has a dazzling start.

In 2004, under the pressure of a series of energy issues and environmental judicial investigations, Western countries began to seek energy transformation, and wind power and photovoltaics became the best choices. This year is known as the first year of the photovoltaic industry.

Stimulated by the policies of many countries, China's photovoltaic industry has entered the first outbreak period.

Contrary to the cognition of many people, photovoltaic enterprises are not actually a technology-intensive industry in the strict sense, because in the process of assembling silicon wafers and integrating battery components, it is actually a labor process without automatic production before. intensive industry.

Therefore, at that time, Western countries gradually transferred the most energy-consuming and most polluting photovoltaic industry, silicon purification, smelting, and assembly production, which required a large amount of labor, to China.

From 2004 to 2007, in just 4 years, the production capacity of battery modules in China's photovoltaic industry has increased from less than 100MW to 1088MW, and China has become the world's largest manufacturer of photovoltaic cells.

At that time, Suntech Power, the leading company in China's photovoltaic production, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange only the second year after the outbreak of the photovoltaic industry, becoming the first Huaxia company to be listed on the U.S. Main Board.

At this time, Huaxia Photovoltaic Industry has many companies and has formed the "China Solar Corps" internationally, which is one of the brightest moments of Huaxia Photovoltaic.

However, when the entire industry is immersed in the impulse to expand and the fantasy of wealth, and the Chinese people are immersed in another "China No. [-]", and when China is about to achieve cornering overtaking in the field of new energy, everyone does not know that the entire industry is already brewing. A huge crisis .

The cause of this crisis was precisely the pattern of "three heads outside" in the photovoltaic industry at that time.

In terms of industry, high-tech manufacturing joints such as silicon crystal manufacturing and slicing are still dominated by Western companies. China's rapidly growing photovoltaic module assembly industry and huge production capacity have to rely on high-priced imported silicon wafers, but they can only earn meager profits from them. profit.

In terms of technology, key equipment such as silicon smelting equipment, silicon crystal melting furnaces, and slicers, key supporting raw materials such as silver paste and polishing agents, and key electronic devices such as inverters are still monopolized by foreign suppliers, and China has imposed strict technical blockade and patent protection.

At the market level, since China's new energy market was still in its infancy at that time, overseas sellers almost monopolized the sales channels of China's photovoltaic companies-the photovoltaic equipment we manufactured could only be sold abroad in the end.

Under such a situation, if there is any disturbance in the international market, the entire enterprise will face the danger of annihilation.

It is a pity that the industry in China did not realize the seriousness of the problem at that time, and was seized by international capital instead.

Due to the explosive growth of China's photovoltaic module production capacity, from 2004 to 2007, the spot price of polysilicon in the international market soared from 40 Dole per kilogram to 200 Dole.

In fact, at this time, the market has already sounded the alarm for China's photovoltaic industry.

However, at this time, Huaxia PV companies have been dazzled by the victory. The investment that should have been carried out in technological transformation and industrial upgrading was used for capacity expansion again, and a large number of PV companies even borrowed money to expand production.

Of course, with the soaring price of polysilicon and the explosive expansion of the industry, some Chinese companies have realized the crisis and the importance of mastering the upstream polysilicon manufacturing. Some companies have begun to invest heavily in the upstream polysilicon industry, trying to open up the industrial supply chain to deal possible crisis.

However, the shortage of key equipment and technology accumulation was fully revealed at this time.

A large amount of equipment and technical patents need to be purchased from foreign companies and even competitors, and the price offered by the other party is naturally sky-high. Coupled with the huge capital cost and the long construction period, this has led to the short-term investment of Huaxia PV companies. Upstream polysilicon is extremely difficult to make a profit, and even fell deeper and deeper in the debt black hole.

After the outbreak of the European debt crisis in 2010, large-scale public debt defaults broke out in many western countries, and the photovoltaic power generation field also became the hardest hit area for default. The photovoltaic market, which has always relied on government subsidies to develop rapidly, stagnated instantly. The pre-construction plan of the power station was cancelled, the subsidy for photovoltaic power generation began to be greatly reduced, and the price of photovoltaic modules plummeted by 30%.

The prices of raw materials soared and the prices of finished products plummeted. Under the siege from both sides, the profits of Huaxia Photovoltaic enterprises supported by cheap labor were eventually taken away by financiers thousands of miles away.

However, the hunt for Huaxia Photovoltaic companies is far from over. In this year, Huaxia Photovoltaic's once fanciful globalization system also began to collapse.

In order to get out of the financial crisis, the West has put forward national strategies of "re-industrialization", and the return and development of the new energy industry has naturally become a top priority.The banner of trade protectionism has begun to be erected again in the West.

In November 2011, the U.S. Ministry of Commerce formally launched anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations on China’s imported solar cells (panels), and the U.S. solar equipment manufacturer SolarWorld asked the U.S. government to impose anti-dumping duties ranging from 11% to 49.88% on such export products from China. taxes and countervailing duties.

For a time, the "three heads outside" Huaxia photovoltaic enterprises almost collapsed across the board, and their sales channels were cut off, which dealt a fatal blow to Huaxia photovoltaic industry.

On March 2013, 3, Suntech Power, China's largest photovoltaic company at the time, declared bankruptcy.The second largest photovoltaic company, Yingli Group, has a total debt ratio of close to 18%, with accounts receivable reaching 80 million yuan. Many production lines have stopped production, and the company's life is hanging by a thread.

Ugly investment bank MG mentioned in a report at the time that the cumulative debts of China's top 10 photovoltaic module manufacturers reached 175 billion dollars, and the entire industry was on the verge of collapse.

The export value of Huaxia Photovoltaic has dropped from nearly 2011 billion yuan in 250 to less than 130 billion Dole, a drop of nearly 50%. It can be said that the entire Huaxia Photovoltaic industry has paid a painful price for its industrial model with three heads out.

However, it was after this catastrophe that Huaxia's photovoltaic industry and Huaxia's officials finally fully understood that the technological foundation, industrial supporting facilities and market layout of any advanced industry must be in their own hands.

However, to achieve this, there is an extremely difficult road in front of the rabbit.

At that time, the cost per unit of electricity of a photovoltaic power plant in Inner Mongolia was as high as 1 yuan, while the cost of coal power in the same period was only 0.38 yuan.

This means that if you want to keep the power plant running, the government must first invest tens of millions of yuan in the construction of the power plant, and then use a subsidy price of 0.62 yuan per kilowatt-hour to maintain the normal operation of the power plant.

This is a huge difficulty. In any country dominated by capital, it is impossible to take such a huge investment risk.

It is true that everyone knows that with the development of the photovoltaic industry and technological progress, the cost of photovoltaic power generation will gradually decrease until it is lower than traditional power generation methods. However, no one has a clear answer for how long this time will be.

No one knows whether the official finances will be dragged down by this emerging industry before the so-called "parity point" is reached.

However, this rabbit is an outlier.

Its strategic vision transcends any real interests and always looks further into the future.

In 2009, the Golden Sun project was launched, and it is expected to invest 100 billion soft sister coins in the form of financial subsidies to promote the development of the domestic photovoltaic market and establish a domestic-to-international buffer zone for domestic photovoltaic enterprises.

This project has saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, solved a large number of electricity problems, and more importantly, it has continued the most critical breath for domestic photovoltaic industry companies that are already on the verge of death.

In the same year, CPI, which has been in the field of new energy for more than ten years, left the west where it was rooted and traveled thousands of miles to the east.

The first action it made was to join the North Jiangsu Project.

The so-called Jiangsu plan, that is, the development plan for the northern Jiangsu area, had been in preparation for nearly 15 years at that time, but since the coastal economy at that time was mainly based on Qingdao and Shanghai, the northern Jiangsu plan had always been a strategic preparatory plan. implement.

After 08, due to the impact of the international financial crisis, the domestic economy urgently needed new growth poles. The North Jiangsu Plan was upgraded to a national strategy. The most critical one is that by 2020, the new energy power generation of the entire province must reach the total power generation 40% of the amount.

With the support of the Northern Subei Project, China Power Investment Corporation and GCL Group established a 1000MW power station, the main purpose of which is to develop and verify new technologies, and this project has continuously provided strong technologies for the development of domestic photovoltaic enterprises since then. support.

Both the market and technology have been solved, and the core raw material link was solved by an engineer who was once unknown.

Chen Weiping, Chief Engineer of Hualu Company.

In 2007, the cold hydrogenation technology developed by him was fully implemented, and in just a few years, he broke through the patent barriers and transmitted this technology to all related industrial companies across the country.

So far, the pattern of the three heads outside has been completely broken.

Subsequently, the potential of Huaxia Photovoltaic enterprises suppressed by the financial crisis was fully released. Western industries that had chosen to shrink their production capacity during the crisis were unable to adjust their production capacity in a timely manner. choose.

In 2011, the output of Huaxia Photovoltaic Group reached 66% of the global output, and the Huaxia Solar Corps went to sea again, carrying the most advanced technology, the strongest financial strength, and the strongest policy support, and began to counterattack the West.

In 2012, Q-Cell, Europe's largest photovoltaic company, went bankrupt, marking the complete failure of the hunt for China's photovoltaic industry, and the end of the nearly 20-year high-profit monopoly history of the West in the photovoltaic industry.

In just six years, those capitalists hiding in Wall Street and Frankfurt could never have imagined that Huaxia Photovoltaic's counterattack would be so swift and severe.

This photovoltaic battle spanning two financial crises has also become a classic battle in the international economic field.

However, the battle did not end there.

After that, the competition in the photovoltaic field began to break away from the commercial dimension and entered the field of geopolitical struggle.

The anti-dumping investigation was launched, domestic photovoltaic companies collapsed overnight, 3500 billion soft sister currency output value was lost, 2000 billion soft sister currency loans appeared structural risks, more than 500 industrial companies went bankrupt, and 50 people lost their jobs at the same time.

This is the last darkness before dawn, but it is also the most critical moment for the entire Chinese photovoltaic industry.

We can use many reasons to explain such a crisis, but fundamentally, the root cause of this crisis is not only the confrontation of one industry, but also the contradiction in the choice of roads of the two countries. It is the Chinese people's desire for a better life. The longing and pursuit are in contradiction with the hegemonic system in which vested interests in the West dominate and oppress everyone except them.

To regain the initiative in such contradictions and conflicts, there is one and only one path we can choose, that is, to return to the people.

In March 2013, under the leadership of CPI, the Huaxia Photovoltaic Corps returned to the Northwest.

Under this strategy, Huaxia gritted its teeth and shattered the industrial layout of the past ten years, redone the entire industrial logic, reversed the gradient transfer theory that has dominated the world economic history for decades, and integrated the latest developments in developed regions The technology is directly applied to the least developed regions across regions, and then gradually transmitted from the underdeveloped regions to the developed regions.

This is a huge innovation, and it is also an exploration full of risks and unknowns.

In this process, maybe even just a wrong step will lead us into the abyss beyond redemption.

However, maybe it was due to the fate of the country, maybe it was the rabbit's strategic vision that played a role again, and the final effect of this strategy far exceeded everyone's expectations.

Under this strategy, all new technologies in the developed regions will directly face the [-]-billion-level market in the Northwest, and the new technologies will obtain the most direct and rapid economic benefits. Grinding, promoting the leapfrog development of technology in the most extreme way.

This is the ambition of the rabbit.

They don't even bother to take the safe path that others have taken step by step. What they want to walk is a path that is opened up by themselves, a path full of thorns but with an infinitely bright future.

In the end, this road became wider and wider under the footsteps of successive pioneers. Huaxia Photovoltaic market broke out in an all-round way, and cutting-edge technologies emerged in an endless stream. Even under the siege of anti-dumping strategies, Huaxia Photovoltaic still resolutely returned to the international market from the west.

After 2019, China's photovoltaic industry has received orders from more than [-] countries. These countries completely ignored the anti-dumping investigations of the two major economies and expelled Western photovoltaic companies out of the country at the slightest disagreement.

Because what we have mastered is already the world's top technology, which has even opened up the gap with other countries for generations. As long as it is a normal country, it knows how to make choices.

This can be called a miracle.

No industry in any country has ever survived the blockade of the two major economies, and Huaxia Photovoltaic not only survived, but even crushed them severely.

We are back.

And this time, no one can stop us.

(End of this chapter)