抄録
This paper analyses the reason of the rapid development of Chinese photovoltaic industry, which has become the top producing country of photovoltaic cells in the world in 2008. It was Japan which has led the technological development and application of photovoltaic cells until recently. But since the emergence of the suppliers of turn-key production lines of photovoltaic cells, the barriers to entry to the industry have lowered. Many Chinese venture capitalists have entered the business and gathered capital by initial public offerings in the U.S. stock market. By contrast, in the Japanese photovoltaic makers, photovoltaic cell production remained to be one of the diversified divisions of a big company. Chinese photovoltaic cell production rapidly surpassed that of Japan’s, taking advantage of its vertically-disintegrated structure, which had a better appeal to the investors. However, Chinese cell manufacturers have run into a cutthroat competition among themselves after the photovoltaic investment bubble in Spain has collapsed during the autumn on 2008. Besides this, it is feared that excess production capacity of polycrystalline silicon will be created because many domestic companies are planning to invest in silicon processing equipments. The Chinese government is now trying to boost domestic demand for photovoltaic cells to change the structure of the domestic photovoltaic industry, which has been too vulnerable to the change in overseas demand.
