Advertisement
US-China relations
China

A rare form of quartz is key to Xinjiang’s solar boom, and almost all of it is in the US

  • The US has cracked down on the Chinese region’s solar industry, citing human rights, but hasn’t tried to leverage its own near monopoly in high-purity quartz
  • The raw material is vital to the low-cost mass production of polysilicon, the prime ingredient in solar panels

Reading Time:6 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
69
Illustration: Henry Wong
Jacob Fromerin WashingtonandCissy Zhouin Hong Kong
The booming and controversial solar industry in China’s far-west Xinjiang region has weathered many storms.
Advertisement

Despite tariffs, rising production costs and human rights sanctions, it pumps out almost half of the world’s polysilicon, the shiny material that lets solar panels turn sunlight into electricity.

The region has almost everything it needs to do the job as fast and as cheaply as possible, from mines to factories to labour – except for one crucial raw material that exists in just a handful of places on Earth. And almost all of that raw material, industry experts say, happens to be sitting in the United States.

Now, as multiple reports have linked Xinjiang’s solar industry to suspected forced labour from the region’s Uygur Muslim population – charges Beijing denies – and as Washington has begun to crack down on trade with Xinjiang’s solar companies, the South China Morning Post has found that Xinjiang’s mostly self-sufficient solar sector may be getting a boost from the rare American resource.

It is called high-purity quartz – a white, undiluted and highly unusual form of quartz, the most abundant rock on the Earth’s surface – and Chinese authorities have said openly that they do not have enough of it to sustain their own industry.

Advertisement
The global solar industry is dominated by Chinese products. Pictured, a worker inspects panels at a solar farm in northern Gansu province. Photo: Reuters
The global solar industry is dominated by Chinese products. Pictured, a worker inspects panels at a solar farm in northern Gansu province. Photo: Reuters

“Quartz resources in China are not optimistic, and there is a lack of high-quality deposits,” a China Securities report said last year. “At present, China’s high-purity quartz sand is still heavily dependent on imports, but the future of localisation is promising.”

Advertisement