Due to the German government's sustainability programme, the country absorbs half the global production of solar panels. In fact, the Chinese mainland's solar-panel industry mostly profits from a German boom in demand for cost-saving solar energy units, recently increasing global market production share beyond 28%, compared to Germany's 20%.

Hong Kong is also becoming a more active player in solar-panel production, with US-based DuPont due to open a solar energy research centre in the territory later this year, as well as a manufacturing facility in Shenzhen.........