Qujing
Qujing's 976,161 urban residents sit inside a ¥160 billion photovoltaic cluster, with beaver-style habitat building pulling polysilicon, cells, modules, and batteries into one plateau city.
Qujing is trying to turn a coal-and-chemicals city on the Yunnan plateau into one of China's main solar-material kitchens. The city sits 1,887 meters above sea level in eastern Yunnan and has about 976,161 urban residents, while the wider prefecture counted 5,765,775 people in the 2020 census. Standard summaries describe Qujing as a transport hinge, a tobacco producer, and a traditional industrial center. What matters now is that it is being rebuilt as a place where energy-intensive photovoltaic manufacturing can live together.
The scale is already large. Yunnan's investment portal says Qujing's silicon-photovoltaic cluster generated ¥160 billion ($22 billion) in output in 2023, one leg of a three-cluster industrial base that also included ¥253 billion in new-energy batteries and ¥223 billion in aluminum processing. JA Solar says its full Qujing project carries planned investment of about ¥17.3 billion ($2.4 billion) and targets annual output value of ¥50 billion once fully commissioned. In April 2024, Southern Power Grid completed a key power-supply task for Xinyi's 200,000-ton polysilicon project, a milestone local industry reporting described as closing the loop from upstream silicon refining to downstream cells and modules.
That is the Wikipedia gap. Qujing is not merely shipping goods through Yunnan. It is converting an older industrial metabolism into a new one. Cheap power, existing chemical know-how, rail links, industrial parks, and permissive land assembly matter more here than lifestyle branding. A city that already knows how to run furnaces, substations, logistics yards, and large workforces has an easier time attracting the next wafer, glass, or battery plant than a cleaner but less prepared rival. The obvious risk is overbuild: if polysilicon prices collapse or national capacity keeps outrunning demand, a city built around one fast-growing chain can discover how quickly a boom hardens into excess capacity.
The biological parallel is beaver. Beavers win by reshaping the landscape so other species have to organize around the pond. Qujing follows that logic through ecosystem engineering, resource allocation, and positive feedback loops. Build the substations, furnaces, and industrial parks first, and the next supplier has a reason to arrive.
Qujing's three biggest industrial clusters generated ¥160 billion in silicon photovoltaics, ¥253 billion in new-energy batteries, and ¥223 billion in aluminum processing in 2023.