Category: Blogs

Attention: Chinese wind power manufacturers! We know that you are eyeing the West. Speaking last week to a house full of Chinese business and trade journalists at The Switch media business luncheon in Beijing, Celia Sun from MAKE consulting company listed a few approaches and risks you may want to consider when entering new markets.

According to MAKE’s Chief Representative in China, regulatory and technical barriers in mature markets may become a hindrance to the overseas business development plans of Chinese companies. To a large extent, this is true. However, as we at The Switch know very well, some of the Chinese wind turbines are already ‘powered by’ Western technologies, such as The Switch’s permanent-magnet generators and full-power converters.

In 2010, China’s speed in wind power development was probably one of the most discussed topics in the global wind power industry. Based in Beijing and looking at the development from this part of the world, I have made a couple of observations about the Chinese market trends in 2011. One thing is clear. While China continues to focus on building its own renewable energy infrastructure and establishing Beijing’s ambitious wind power capacity goals, the Chinese wind power industry has definitely started to gear up and they are eyeing West.

China announced last week that it would restrict its rare earth export quota and the news came unwelcome for the Western renewable energy industry. In Beijing, a representative of a Chinese Ministry of Commerce think tank commented: “Foreign nations do not make sense when they blame China for reducing exports. Some of them can produce rare earth themselves. Nations that own rare earth resources should take the responsibility of producing and help supply global demand.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOQXFKwoCVw

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