Recently, CCTV News has taken out the video of Xi Jinping visiting Banyang Village four years ago, boasting about the village’s use of green electricity to achieve zero carbon emissions, claiming that the installed photovoltaic equipment allows each household to earn 2,500 yuan annually, and other news media have also continued to follow up on this story. A month ago, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also revised and issued the “Management Measures for the Development and Construction of Distributed Photovoltaic Power Generation,” claiming to adapt to new situations and requirements, and promote high-quality development of distributed photovoltaic power generation. However, this is merely a recent strategy by the Chinese government to consume excess inventory amid a severe oversupply in the photovoltaic industry in recent years.
The Chinese government promotes photovoltaic power generation as suitable for self-use and has deceived many farmers into taking out loans without their knowledge. But why are some users reluctant to use electricity? Because photovoltaic power generates direct current (DC), which cannot be directly used on common alternating current (AC) appliances. If they do not purchase DC appliances, the electricity generated by photovoltaic systems can only be fed into the grid. As a result, users cannot directly use the electricity produced by their installed photovoltaic devices and must input from the grid, essentially selling the electricity they generate to the power company and then buying electricity from the power company with the money earned. However, due to the sharp increase in photovoltaic installed capacity in recent years, the grid’s capacity to bear the load has become severely insufficient, making it difficult to sell photovoltaic electricity. Since users lack the qualification to sell electricity, they cannot use the electricity they generate directly and must buy back electricity at monopolistic prices from the power grid, which leads to phenomena such as being reluctant to turn on heating devices even in winter.
The photovoltaic industry has a very high component ratio; aside from maintenance through equivalent exchanges, users do not invest much labor, so the profit brought by it should be minimal. However, compared to thermal power, photovoltaic power has a stronger generation capacity, allowing for excess profits. Coupled with subsidies from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, users can barely earn a few thousand yuan. As the share of photovoltaic capacity increases, the proportion of the electricity sector capable of creating surplus value decreases, and the overall surplus value that the power industry can obtain is continually declining. This can only reduce the excess profits of the photovoltaic industry, with profit margins continuously falling. The photovoltaic subsidies ended in 2022, and with aging equipment, whether users can recover their costs before the equipment’s lifespan ends remains questionable.
Banyang Village is clearly a “poverty alleviation” model strongly supported by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Before Xi Jinping visited, it was a poor village without electricity. After Xi Jinping’s visit, to promote the Ministry’s “poverty alleviation” policies, Banyang Village was given special attention. Even with a local photovoltaic capacity of 2MW, calculated at the current cost of 0.7 yuan/W, it would require 1.4 million yuan to purchase photovoltaic equipment. Later, a “solar-storage-charging” integrated parking lot costing hundreds of thousands was built. Such infrastructure would have been impossible for a previously impoverished village (班彦村，在感恩中奋进前行--政务公开). The news claims that after developing the photovoltaic industry, Banyang Village quickly “escaped poverty,” “found the right development path,” which is undoubtedly an exaggeration of the photovoltaic industry’s capacity, aimed at deceiving more workers into falling into the so-called distributed photovoltaic trap, alleviating the excess production crisis in the industry. This also demonstrates the reactionary nature of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology through the following event:
“August 23rd every year is Banyang Village’s Gratitude Day. Maoling Winery launches the 8·23 series of gratitude wines, the main alley of the new village is called Gratitude Road, and greening projects such as Gratitude Forest are implemented. We also leverage red tourism resources to create ‘Red + Gratitude + Happiness’ boutique tourism routes, allowing villagers to continuously enhance their sense of gain, happiness, and security through innovative development.”
August 23, 2016, was the day Xi Jinping visited Banyang Village, indicating the loyalty of the wealthy farmers and officials there to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Meanwhile, the polarization within Banyang Village is also very obvious: on one side are those with net annual income exceeding 160,000 yuan, such as the winery owner whose “Communist Party member service team helped him achieve electrification,” and on the other side are villagers earning only 80 yuan per day engaged in picking labor. Getting rich without exploiting the poor is impossible; the so-called photovoltaic poverty alleviation in Banyang Village is merely a lie woven by the Chinese government to save the industry from excess production, a malicious means to continue exploiting impoverished people through a small parasitic elite, and workers should never feel grateful to the Chinese government.
【两会特刊·实干笃行】班彦：感恩奋进 走好致富路_腾讯新闻
一个村庄就是一座发电厂，71户村民的光伏实验_腾讯新闻
