After a massive building binge that has made China home to half the world’s solar and wind power generating capacity, Beijing looks set to start spreading around the financial burden created by all of that construction. Put differently, the billions of dollars that have gone into this building binge could soon be spread through the country’s massive system of state-owned investors and enterprises.
The spreading of such massive spending across a vast array of investors is something that China is uniquely qualified to do, since a huge portion of the country’s economy is still under state control is often called on to invest this way as a sort of policy tool. But it also poses risk to the entities that end up buying such assets, which are often built as much to meet government policy objectives as for their commercial viability.
The latest signal of how Beijing plans to spread the financial burden for all of its new solar and wind farm construction comes from Xinte Energy Co. Ltd. (1799.HK), which has recently morphed from a maker of solar energy materials to a solar and wind farm builder and operator. Such a transition isn’t unheard of in this industry, since many solar equipment companies have turned to solar farm construction and operation to create more demand for their products. But Xinte stands out as a somewhat extreme case, since solar materials have gone from accounting for about 70% of its revenue just three years ago to just 13% in the first half of 2025.