Since May 2019, Hanergy, China’s leading thin-film power group for photovoltaic solar panels, has been unable to pay its wage bills, causing hundreds of employees to protest at the company’s Beijing headquarters.
Since May 2019, Hanergy, China’s leading thin-film power group for photovoltaic solar panels, has been unable to pay its wage bills, causing hundreds of employees to protest at the company’s Beijing headquarters. As of November 2019, the company has overdue wages of 1 billion yuan (US$142m) for nearly 10,000 employees and the company has stopped paying into housing and social insurance funds for employees. Because of the financial shortfall, Hanergy’s industrial parks nationwide have mostly suspended production. Since 2009, the company invested 80 billion yuan (US$11.4b) in the thin-film industry with a focus on R&D, and the company’s bad account receivables have amounted to 60 billion yuan (US$8.5b), according to Li Hejun, founder and chairman of Hanergy. Business analysts argued that over-capacity, reduction of government support and slowing economic growth, coupled with China-US trade frictions, have caused the crisis at the private clean energy company, and it is likely that State-owned enterprises will take over the company.
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