Once an outsider, China’s photovoltaic (PV) industry is now the world’s frontrunner. Data for 2023 from the National Energy Administration show that China’s PV power generation capacity has ranked first in the world for eight consecutive years.
Gao Jifan, a deputy to the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) and the founder of a leading solar panel maker, is one of the contributors to China’s leading position in the industry.
For him, technological innovation decides the survival of a PV manufacturing company. Gao said when the industry suffered severe losses in 2010, he refused suggestions to cut R&D investment and kept funding it. Due to his insistence on innovation, his company leads the world in the number of invention patents.
Gao’s story echoes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s repeated words on developing new quality productive forces, a term first put forward by Xi last September during an inspection in a northeast city, where he highlighted the need for a new model for economic development based on innovation in advanced sectors.
President Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed the concept again when he participated in a deliberation with fellow lawmakers from east China’s Jiangsu Province during the second session of the 14th NPC on Tuesday.
He called on the province to develop new quality productive forces according to local conditions, saying Jiangsu has good conditions and strong capability to develop them and urging the province to develop advanced manufacturing and forge clusters of strategic emerging industries with international competitiveness.
“Localities should take into account their own resource endowment, industrial foundation and scientific research conditions in promoting the development of new industries, models and growth drivers in a selective manner,” Xi said.
As one of the engines driving China’s economic growth, Jiangsu’s GDP reached 12.82 trillion yuan ($1.78 trillion) last year, ranking second in China. The advanced manufacturing industry has become the strongest source of the province’s GDP growth in recent years, according to Li Hui, an associate researcher at the Institute of Economics of Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences.
Statistics show that the output value of Jiangsu’s strategic emerging industries and high-tech industries accounted for 41.3 percent and 49.9 percent of the province’s industries, respectively.
Last year, the province also revealed its plan to further promote high-end industries, targeting the creation of five strategic emerging industrial clusters with international competitiveness, namely biomedicine, intelligent manufacturing equipment, integrated circuits, smart grids, and new energy.