Government subsidies for the Chinese photovoltaic industry

Since 2009, the subsidy for large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants had been launched, which effectively promoted the development of PV industry. At the same time, negative effects, like serious oversupply of PV industry, were brought about by these large scale governmental subsidies. Although governmental subsidy strongly supports the China PV companies, few of them have competitiveness in the global market. This dramatically conflictive phenomenon attracted many researchers' attentions in recent years. However, investigations on the best entry and exit occasions of governmental subsidies for the PV industry were rarely reported in previous studies. Therefore, based on the existing division method of enterprise development model, classification of 72 PV companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges in China was firstly carried out in this paper. This is followed by studying the influence of governmental subsidies on the indexes of different stages of enterprise development. Finally, a conclusion was drawn that the governmental subsidies at Early Exploratory Stage can maximize the social and economic effects, suggesting the best entry occasion, and subsidies at Intermediate Stage and Mature Stage have little effects on its turnover and aggravate the overcapacity of PV supply, suggesting a suitable exit occasion.