China’s photovoltaic association says industry executive was detained briefly in Germany to assist with investigation
- The incident occurred on Monday when a group of Chinese photovoltaic company executives flew to Germany to attend Intersolar Europe 2023
- The China News Service said the detained executive was Pu Yonghua, a senior executive of Jiangsu Green Power New Energy
A Chinese executive from a photovoltaic company was “taken away” in Germany to assist with an investigation and later returned to their hotel, according to a statement by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) on Tuesday.
The incident occurred on Monday when a group of Chinese photovoltaic company executives flew to Germany to attend Intersolar Europe 2023, the world’s largest exhibition for the solar industry, which takes place in Munich this week. One executive was “taken away” by German authorities after he arrived in Munich, according to the industry association.
The incident was first reported by the Shanghai Securities News before going viral on China’s internet. Nationalist tabloid Global Times reported the detention a few hours later, saying that the executive was “forcibly taken away in Germany by authorities”. The newspaper quoted Thomas Liu, an industry veteran, as saying that the incident might be a follow-up to the EU’s anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations of 2019.
The China News Service, a state-owned agency, said the detained executive was Pu Yonghua, a senior executive of Jiangsu Green Power New Energy, a private company located in Changzhou, a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province. Pu, 47, is the company’s second-largest shareholder, with 30.6 per cent.
Phone calls to Jiangsu Green Power New Energy went unanswered on Tuesday. There were no reports about the incident in Germany and authorities there have not commented on the matter.
Jiangsu Green Power states on its official WeChat account that it is bringing a variety of modules and energy storage machines to “showcase its latest photovoltaic and storage technologies” at the exhibition in Germany. There was no mention of the incident on its website.
Founded in 2009, the company has a factory with 10,000 square meters of space, and 1,400 employees focused on research and development, manufacturing, sales of solar cell modules and services related to photovoltaic power generation and energy storage systems, according to its website.
