on April 8, a news from Japan shocked the photovoltaic circle: for products shipped after April, large Chinese photovoltaic panel enterprises jointly raised the sales price in Japan, with a maximum increase of 30%. Jinko Energy, which ranks first in global production, Longji Green Energy Technology, which ranks second, Trina Solar, which ranks fourth, and Canadian Artes Solar, which ranks seventh and mainly produces in China, are all among the price increases.
This price increase is not a “robbery” by enterprises, but a forced move under drastic changes in the cost structure. The price increase reflects the cost transmission of two dimensions: on the one hand, the price of silver rose to about three times that of half a year ago at the end of January 2026, and silicon, aluminum and copper also rose by 40%, 10% and 30% respectively. Industry insiders estimate that the overall production cost of photovoltaic panels has increased by about 60%; on the other hand, the Chinese government has officially canceled the VAT export tax rebate for photovoltaic products since April 1, previously, the “tax rebate dividend” that supported China’s photovoltaic low-cost going to sea was also completely zero.
More than 80% of photovoltaic panels in Japan rely on Chinese products, which means that the transmission effect of Chinese companies’ price increases will cause significant shocks in the Japanese renewable energy market. But in the Japanese market, the downstream reaction is quite intriguing. According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, many industry insiders admitted that the previous price was “too low”, and the price increase was only reasonable to a certain extent. “Relying only on the company’s own efforts to cut costs, the operating situation is still very serious,” said Ito Kundai, senior manager of Trine Solar’s Japan Corporate Product Strategy Planning Management Department.
And to understand the deep meaning of this price increase, it is necessary to go back to the plight of China’s photovoltaic industry in the past two years. Between 2023 and 2025, the price of PV modules fell by 60%, and the profit margin of head companies plummeted from 20% to-10%. In the first three quarters of 2025, 31 companies in the main photovoltaic industry chain lost as much as 31 billion yuan-although the loss narrowed to 6.4 billion yuan in the third quarter, a decrease of 46% from the previous quarter, the entire industry continued to “bleed”.
More alarming is the paradox of “volume increase and price decrease” on the export side. From January to October 2025, exports of silicon wafers, batteries and modules increased by 8.3, 91.4 and 6 per cent year-on-year, respectively, while total exports fell by 13.2 per cent year-on-year. In other words, the more Chinese companies export, the less they earn. Behind the coexistence of export volume growth and profit shrinkage is that some enterprises convert export tax rebates into price reduction space and use financial funds to subsidize overseas customers, forming an absurd pattern of “internalization” and distorting price signals in overseas markets.
In January 2026, two almost simultaneous policy changes cast the largest variables in China’s photovoltaic industry.
The first policy comes from the financial side. On January 8, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued a notice announcing the cancellation of VAT export tax rebates for photovoltaic and other products from April 1, 2026. Previously, the PV export tax rebate policy has been implemented for more than ten years, and has been gradually tightened in the past two years: from 13% to 9% in December 2024, it is now further zero.
The second policy comes from the regulatory side. On January 6, the General Administration of Market Supervision interviewed the China Photovoltaic Industry Association and six polysilicon giants, including Tongwei, GCL and Daquan, requiring that production capacity, production and sales volume and sales price should not be agreed upon, market division and profit distribution should not be carried out in any form, and information such as price, cost, production and sales volume should not be communicated and coordinated. The three red lines are extremely clear, announcing that the “industry self-discipline” behavior led by the association has been completely stopped.
From the outside world, the two policies seem to be “fighting each other”-canceling tax rebates and raising export costs, while stopping price coordination and not allowing artificial price support. However, the essential logic of the two is unified: the state refuses to continue to pay for the low-price malicious competition of enterprises, and also refuses to “monopolize” enterprises in the name of “self-discipline.
Among the above policy combinations, what is particularly noteworthy is the suspension of the “self-discipline” behavior of industry associations. This reflects a deeper structural contradiction: expecting industry associations to set price standards to “prohibit internal rolling” faces the red line of anti-monopoly law in China and major global markets.
China’s “anti-monopoly law” explicitly prohibits trade associations from organizing operators in their own industries to “fix or change commodity prices”. the associations involved can be fined up to 3 million yuan, and in serious cases, their registration may even be canceled. In December 2025, the European Commission imposed a total fine of 72 million euros (0.56 billion yuan) on car battery manufacturers and their industry associations-even if the industry association publishes a so-called “median price” report on its website, it may be identified as a cartel agreement and be heavily fined.
Since the road of industry associations coordinating prices is legally impassable, what is the way out to crack the “internal volume”? An increasingly clear idea is: the state, from the labor cost side, systematically raise the cost baseline of the whole industry, so that low-price competition is no longer economically feasible.
In 2026, this idea is landing in multiple forms. The fourth phase of the golden tax is fully networked and the social security tax is deeply settled. Starting from January 1, 2026, the social security payment of labor dispatch employees will realize real-time comparison of wages, personal tax and social security data. Enterprises will no longer be allowed to evade responsibility through “minimum base declaration” and other means. The cost of social security in labor-intensive industries such as manufacturing is expected to increase by 15% to 20%, and the rigid implementation of equal pay for equal work has also greatly reduced the employment flexibility of enterprises.
These policies mean that companies that used to rely on low labor costs to maintain low-cost competitiveness will gradually lose their living space, and so will the photovoltaic industry. Especially in the medium and long term, when the cost baseline as a whole moves up, industry competition is expected to accelerate from the “price war” to technology, quality and brand as the core of the “value war”, the head of the enterprise by virtue of technology premium to seek breakthrough trend will be more apparent.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that with the RMB exchange rate breaking through the 6.8 mark in early 2026, foreign trade enterprises are facing increasing exchange risks. In this context, major photovoltaic companies have taken exchange rate risk management measures. For example, Trine Solar intends to carry out foreign exchange hedging business with a hedging scale of US $1 billion, and Jingao Technology has set a foreign exchange hedging ceiling of US $4 billion. The widespread use of these tools has become the basic line of defense for head companies to guard profits. Obviously, no matter what the pace of the end of the “internal volume” of the industry as a whole, under the trend of RMB appreciation, good exchange rate risk management is always the bottom line that enterprises can actively control.
There is no doubt that the price increase itself is not the answer to the end, but the price increase story in the Japanese market is still a good start. The moment when the “inner roll” really ends may have to wait until the day when Chinese photovoltaic companies completely bid farewell to the price fight and make global customers willing to pay a premium for “Made in China” by virtue of comprehensive competitiveness.
