Gavekal Technologies

Over the past year Gavekal Technologies has tracked China’s progress across a range of tech sectors. Today we take a step back and try to assess its overall capabilities. First, outside a handful of areas, China is still more of a fast follower than a global pace-setter. Second, China’s well-documented manufacturing dominance is mainly in products of medium or low complexity. Finally, China’s tech ecosystem still relies heavily on foreign-sourced components, equipment and intellectual property.

For most of the past two decades, the solar story was about making the panel cheaper. China has solved that problem. Thanks to massive excess capacity, Chinese producers are not making much money. With equipment now a commodity, the economic value of solar will mainly come from its installation. The broadest local benefits are likely to come in countries that can figure out how to scale up distributed solar generation at homes and businesses.