Solar panels from China are getting more expensive, and for once the manufacturers are not the ones cutting. Canal Solar reported that panel costs rose 15% in one week after producers pledged to stop selling below industry-calculated costs. Behind the price move is a sector that has been losing money on almost every panel it ships.
In the first half of 2026, Tongwei posted a net loss of CNY 5.12 billion ($763 million), Longi CNY 3.68 billion, TCL Zhonghuan CNY 3.20 billion, JinkoSolar CNY 3.08 billion and JA Solar CNY 2.66 billion, according to pv magazine. Losses alone have not shut factories. Companies kept them running to preserve cash flow, employment and market share.
Beijing’s answer is to change the rules of the contest. On July 2 the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other bodies issued three mandatory national standards, covering energy use. Caixin reports they take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. Together with unified cost-accounting rules, they are meant to give regulators a technical basis for policing below-cost sales.
Enforcement followed. The State Administration for Market Regulation held a price-compliance meeting on July 31 in Yancheng, Jiangsu province. pv magazine USA noted that regulators have yet to impose a formal price floor. On Aug. 6, eight polysilicon producers, including Tongwei, GCL Technology, Daqo and Xinte, signed a pledge in Shanghai. Together they hold more than 90% of China’s effective polysilicon capacity. Polysilicon is the purified raw material from which solar cells are made.
Tax policy has tightened too. The Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration said the export VAT rebate for photovoltaic products would end on April 1, 2026. The rebate had been 9%.
The pledge has moved prices, but not far enough. At the end of July, dense polysilicon averaged about CNY 31.5/kg, against industry estimates of full cost at CNY 40/kg to 50/kg. Mysteel put n-type polysilicon at CNY 40.5/kg on Sept. 11, against a full cost of CNY 45.6/kg.
Supply is the harder problem. InfoLink said transactions remained scattered, large buyers were reluctant to pay more, September output was expected to rise and inventories kept building. One analysis put industry-wide polysilicon stocks at 500,000 to 520,000 metric tons, four to five months of global consumption. Policy makers have tried capacity buyouts before. In December 2025, the largest producers set up a CNY 3 billion platform in Beijing to manage capacity.
The next fixed date is Jan. 1, when the energy-consumption standards become mandatory and plants that cannot meet them face pressure to close. Tan Youru, a BloombergNEF analyst, said capacity clearance remains the industry’s greatest challenge.
