Enlarge (credit: Dennis Schroeder, National Renewable Energy Lab)

Chinese financial and business news site Caixin Media wrote that Chinese solar equipment exports fell 10 percent between 2015 and 2016. The statistics came from Zhang Sen, the secretary general of the solar division within China’s Chamber of Commerce for Imports and Exports of Machinery and Electronic Products, who spoke at a seminar late last week.

Zhang apparently attributed the drop to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy policies from the US, the EU, Australia, Canada, India, and Turkey, as well as to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which was designed to encourage Chinese investment in neighboring economies. According to Caixin, the result of that initiative was that “solar power equipment such as panels and batteries have been manufactured and exported by other countries and thus don’t count as exports as such.”

The US and other countries have imposed tariffs on Chinese solar products for years. A large jump in tariffs came in 2012 when the US Commerce Department decided that Chinese manufacturers were wrongly undercutting US solar manufacturers. That year, many Chinese solar companies were hit with punitive tariffs of around 30 percent on equipment imported by the US. American solar panel manufacturers complained that Chinese manufacturers were taking advantage of massive loans from China’s state-run banks and counting on demand from foreign countries whose governments subsidized solar panels.