From its red brick headquarters on the outskirts of Atlanta, the solar producer Suniva has spent more than a decade touting itself as a champion of American manufacturing. Founded by a local professor, its solar cells can be found in everything from the panels on a supermarket roof in Texas to a small-scale power project set up by a pecan farmer in southern Georgia.

Yet when it filed for bankruptcy in April last year, blaming cheap imports from China for its downfall, the documents betrayed a very different reality.

Signing the petition filed in Delaware Bankruptcy Court was Cheng “Alex” Zhu, the Chinese president of the US subsidiary of Shunfeng International Clean Energy, which since 2015 had been the company’s Hong Kong-listed majority shareholder. All the directors signing the attached board resolution did so in Chinese characters.