Government urged to oppose EU anti-dumping probe

China's major solar energy enterprises have appealed central and local governments to oppose the EU's anti-dumping complaint against Chinese solar panel producers during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's two-day visit to China which starts Thursday.

"We have just written a letter to Jiangsu Province and also submitted a petition to the central government to appeal for support on opposing EU's probe," Zhang Jianmin, senior manager of corporate communications at Suntech Power Holdings Co, one of China's major photovoltaic (PV) producers, told the Global Times Wednesday.

"The Baoding city government officials of Hebei Province have visited our company and encouraged us to pull through the hard times," Wang Zhixin, director of communications department at Yingli Green Energy Holdings Co, another leading domestic solar panel manufacturer, told the Global Times.

Other companies like Trina Solar Ltd and Canadian Solar Inc have also appealed for local governments' help, sources were quoted by China Business News as saying Wednesday.

Zeng Shaojun, secretary-general of the China New Energy Chamber of Commerce (CNECC), a national industry organization which represents 500 Chinese energy enterprises from the private sector, told the Global Times that his chamber is preparing to write a letter to urge certain top Chinese officials to discuss the probe with Merkel, who will make an official two-day visit to China Thursday.

Germany, Spain and Italy are the major European importers of Chinese PV products.

Zeng also predicted that 70 percent of global market share of domestic solar energy enterprises will be seriously hurt, and 300,000 to 500,000 jobs will be lost if the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, makes an affirmative ruling on the anti-dumping complaint.

An analyst said that obsessed by continuous anti-dumping complaints and unfair treatment overseas, domestic manufacturers who currently export most of their products need to turn to the domestic market for future growth.

"The local governments might subsidize the use of solar power in China to boost consumption of domestic PV products," said Lin Boqiang, director of the Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University.