Recently, the Chinese media has been hyping up the same old story, once again boasting about photovoltaic power generation projects built for solar product exports in the UAE, claiming that they can supply green electricity to hundreds of thousands of households. In fact, China is frantically exporting photovoltaic modules; data shows that from January to November 2024, China exported approximately 219.31 GW of photovoltaic modules, a 14% increase compared to 191.81 GW in the same period in 2023. The Brazilian government implemented a duty-free import quota of $1.01 billion starting July 2024, and in less than half a year, the total import value of photovoltaic modules into Brazil reached $920 million, accounting for 91% of the duty-free quota, indicating strong support from the Brazilian government for Chinese photovoltaic products. Overseas, many photovoltaic companies are also building large manufacturing bases; in July 2024, JinkoPower and Saudi Arabia jointly built a photovoltaic cell manufacturing base worth about $985 million, TCL Zhonghuan will also manufacture photovoltaic wafers in Saudi Arabia, and United Solar will establish a polysilicon factory in Oman. In November, JA Solar and the UAE planned to establish solar cell and panel factories in Egypt. These data suggest that the outlook for China’s photovoltaic industry seems very promising, but is that really the case?
In 2024, prices for many products in the domestic photovoltaic industry chain have fallen sharply, with declines exceeding 45%. The photovoltaic output value in the first ten months decreased by 43.17%, and export volume increased while export value decreased by 34.5% compared to the same period. The number of projects in production, commissioning, or planning has decreased by over 75% year-on-year. In reality, due to fierce competition among photovoltaic companies, the domestic market has quickly become saturated, leading to massive overproduction. The trend of unlimited expansion in the photovoltaic industry has also caused supporting infrastructure construction to lag far behind. Moreover, since overseas colonies and countries are rich in natural resources, have low labor costs, and the market has not been fully divided, it is an inevitable trend for the capitalist class pursuing profits to transfer production to colonial countries and sell locally to earn excess profits. Therefore, the Middle East has become the preferred region for the photovoltaic industry’s capitalists. The capital outflow associated with relocating photovoltaic production to these colonies not only invades local energy industries but also does not reduce electricity costs for local people, and it worsens unemployment among domestic workers. This process makes the parasitic and decayed nature of China’s capitalist class in exploiting colonial countries even more pronounced. Only by overthrowing the existing imperialist colonial system can these industries truly serve their intended purpose and genuinely benefit the broad masses of workers.
