The recent escalations in the Chinese-US trade dispute, especially the ban on US exports to ZTE, have triggered reflection on the necessity of improving weak links in China’s core technology.

Liu Shuai, a public utility, new energy, and environmental protection industry analyst at UBS Securities stated during his latest report on China’s PV power industry that global PV power demand has embarked on sustained, long-term growth, and that the advantages of China’s manufacturing will bring profits for companies.

Liu believes that with the “Made in China 2025” initiative, in looking at the entire manufacturing industry, China’s PV power industry is one of the few industries that can claim its own core technology throughout the entire industry chain, independent intellectual property rights, large-scale production capacity, and cost advantage.

According to calculations by UBS, China now respectively produces 56%, 96%, 76%, and 79% of the world’s major PV power industry chain components of polysilicon, silicon wafers, batteries, and modules. Moreover, by means of their technological superiority, Chinese companies boast the world’s highest power conversion efficiency rates at the world’s lowest costs.

With the gradually declining costs around the globe for bringing PV power onto the grid, Liu says that the development of the PV power industry will become free from the difficult problems of periodic demand and overproduction and thus enter a long-term period of growth, with South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America turning into major sources of PV power demand growth. In this way, PV power that is “Made in China” and the “Belt and Road” initiative are becoming quite a match.