| The thesis studies the impacts of public policies on China's solar photovoltaic (PV) industry between 1998 and 2013, with the aim of investigating how the industry has benefited from national policies and what policy improvement can be made to shape a more competitive and sustainable PV industry in China. The thesis concludes that key solar PV policies, such as public R&D investment, tax incentives to support the PV manufacturing sector, rural electrification programs, and industrial standards, all accomplished their goals, but the first two also created some side effects. As for domestic market creation, although policies launched before 2011 were unable to keep up with the growth of domestic production or to reverse the export orientation of PV manufacturers, the feed-in tariff launched later on significantly facilitated the expansion of domestic market. There are some common practices of leading countries in the PV industry that China can learn from: public R&D support with high involvement of the private sector, performance-based incentives instead of investment-based incentives, and a planned reduction of incentives. |
