Nowadays, if you want to ask who is the leading enterprise in China's photovoltaic industry, many people will say that it is LONGi shares with a market value of more than 400 billion yuan. But if you ask who is the "first person in the photovoltaic industry", I believe that many people will not vote for li Zhenguo, the actual controller of LONGi shares, but will vote for Shi Zhengrong, the former "richest man in China" and the founder of Wuxi Suntech.
From being adopted by others as an "abandoned baby", to relying on knowledge to walk out of the mountains, to returning to China as a "foreign doctor", to becoming the "richest man in China", Shi Zhengrong spent 41 years to complete this achievement. However, after only 8 years, Shi Zhengrong fell from a hero in the photovoltaic industry to a bankruptcy of both wealth and credit.
Now, after 10 years of silence, Shi Zhengrong, who has been naturalized in Australia, has returned to the public eye with a value of 2.7 billion, will everyone still regard him as the "return of the king" of the hero?
I. The "abandoned baby" who changes his fate by knowledge
In 1963, Shi Zhengrong was born in a poor family in Yangzhong, Jiangsu Province, because the family could not support so many people, Shi Zhengrong was born and passed on to a family surnamed Shi. Recalling his childhood, Shi Zhengrong did not complain, but said: "When I was a child, my dream was to go out of this mountain and see the outside world. ”
In 1979, 16-year-old Shi Zhengrong was successfully admitted to Changchun Institute of Optics and Machinery with his talent and hard work. Later, he entered the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a graduate student, and in 1988, he came to the University of New South Wales in Australia to worship under the "father of solar energy", Professor Martin Green, becoming the shortest student in the history of the University of New South Wales to obtain a doctorate, and even conquered the world problem of "growing silicon film on glass". Even Professor Green praised this student: "Shi Zhengrong is one of the smartest students I have ever taught." ”
In 2000, Shi Zhengrong, who witnessed the rapid development of the solar energy market, returned to China with the desire for entrepreneurship and gave up the superior life in Australia. Many people said: "The arrival of Shi Zhengrong has changed China's photovoltaic industry,"
In fact, it is true that choosing to return to China and coming to Wuxi is not only an important turning point for Shi Zhengrong himself, but also for China's photovoltaic industry. "A Shi Zhengrong, half of China's photovoltaic history", this sentence is not exaggerated at all. Shi Zhengrong brought the photovoltaic silicon thin film technology learned from Australia and pioneered the commercialization of China's photovoltaic industry.
However, the "godfather of Chinese photovoltaics" Shi Zhengrong's initial entrepreneurship was not so smooth.
SECOND, "China's richest man" who started from Wuxi
Shi Zhengrong, who returned to China, spent a week writing a 210-page business plan, shouting the slogan: "Give me $8 million, and I will give you a world's largest enterprise", high-profile financing. However, he was blinded by venture capital institutions, and some people even called Shi Zhengrong a "business liar".
However, one city has keenly captured Shi Zhengrong and the photovoltaic projects behind him. This city is the cradle of China's national industry - Wuxi. To a certain extent, it is not so much shi Zhengrong that has made China's photovoltaic industry an achievement, but rather that it is Wuxi that has achieved China's photovoltaic industry.
In 2001, Wuxi Suntech Solar Energy Company was established, and under the call of Wuxi, 8 local state-owned enterprises invested 6 million US dollars in Suntech. After two years, Suntech completed the first photovoltaic panel production line, with a production capacity of up to 15 MW / year, which is almost the sum of China's photovoltaic cell production in the previous 4 years, but Suntech's economic benefits are not optimistic, with a loss of nearly 7 million yuan that year.
2003 was the most difficult time for Suntech, and the partners who started the business were not optimistic and left one after another. In the end, Wuxi officials came forward to get 50 million guarantee funds from Little Swan, which allowed Suntech to tide over the difficulties.
In 2004, Germany introduced the "Renewable Energy Law", and the subsidies for the photovoltaic industry increased, which promoted the expansion of the global photovoltaic market, an increase of up to 61% year-on-year. This allowed Suntech to jump directly into the outbreak period. Financing, expansion and listing, Suntech soon became the world's largest manufacturer of photovoltaic modules, and Wuxi also became the largest photovoltaic production base in China. Shi Zhengrong has also won many honorary titles such as "Photovoltaic Hero", "China's PV Godfather", "China's Richest Man" and so on.
With the success of Suntech, Wuxi has launched the 530 plan, attracting 30 PV leading talents within 5 years, and other cities such as Suzhou are not willing to show weakness and have established their own photovoltaic industry bases. At that time, the photovoltaic industry summed it up in one sentence: as long as there is money, it can be put into production, and as long as it is put into production, it can make money. In less than a few years, dozens of photovoltaic companies have successfully gone public.
From 2005 to 2015, China's installed photovoltaic capacity increased from 68 MW to 16,600 MW, an increase of 244 times in ten years. At that time, Chinese photovoltaic companies occupied the top 10 positions in the global photovoltaic industry chain, which is also an important reason why many people later said, "It is Shi Zhengrong who shortened the gap between China's photovoltaic industry and the world by at least 15 years".
However, just like the new energy automobile industry today, behind the surge in production capacity is the hidden danger of overcapacity in the future.
Third, is it right or wrong to protect yourself?
Shi Zhengrong's "director" of the photovoltaic industry drama made himself famous and profitable, and also made the Chinese photovoltaic industry look prosperous at that time. But in fact, at that time, the domestic photovoltaic industry was in the early stage of development, and 90% of the raw materials in the industrial chain, such as monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon, mainly relied on imports. It can be said that at that time, the lifeblood of China's photovoltaic industry was fiercely held in the hands of foreign upstream raw material companies. To some extent, what Suntech does is the role of a high-level processing plant.
After 2004, along with the rapid growth of China's photovoltaic industry, the price of crystalline silicon raw materials soared.
From $20/kg in 2006, it has risen to $500/kg in less than 2 years. Although Shi Zhengrong's personal wealth has been harvested innumerable. However, the biggest cake of the entire Chinese photovoltaic industry chain has flowed into the pockets of European and American capital. All of this eventually exploded in 2011.
With Suntech's high costs, the company incurred significant losses, and by 2012, Suntech's stock market value had evaporated by nearly 60%. By March 2013, Wuxi Suntech Company went bankrupt and reorganized, involving more than 50 creditors and involving an amount of up to 17 billion yuan.
In fact, Shi Zhengrong had hoped to save Suntech, but he chose to protect his own interests, refused to guarantee all his personal assets without responsibility, and also refused the takeover of the local state-owned company Wuxi Guolian, and finally let Suntech enter a dead end of bankruptcy. In this regard, Wu Xiaobo, an expert in financial commentary, once said that with the liquidation of Suntech, Shi Zhengrong's credit also went bankrupt.
IV. Conclusion
From 2013 to 2022, 10 years have passed.
Today, Shi Zhengrong, who has become an Australian citizen, has returned to the Hurun rich list with a value of 2.7 billion. His invention of photovoltaic materials that can be attached to the surface of buildings is becoming a new weapon for him to re-"conquer" the photovoltaic industry.
But as many financial commentators have said: a business can start over when it goes bankrupt. Personal credit bankruptcy, can it be restarted?