See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/327646688

Dynamic features of China’s photovoltaic listed companies in different

periods: Based on Partial Granger Causality network

Article  in  Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy · September 2018

DOI: 10.1063/1.5023131

CITATIONS READS

0 112

6 authors, including:

Mei Sun Dun Han

Jiangsu University Jiangsu University
87 PUBLICATIONS   883 CITATIONS    28 PUBLICATIONS   97 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Cuixia Gao Isaac Adjei Mensah

Jiangsu University Jiangsu University
24 PUBLICATIONS   146 CITATIONS    15 PUBLICATIONS   1 CITATION   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

CRUDE OIL PRICE, ENERGY CONSUMPTION (FOSSIL FUEL), CO2 EMMISSIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH; A POOLED MEAN GROUP ESTIMATION APPROACH FOR AFRICAN
COUNTRIES View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Isaac Adjei Mensah on 13 October 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Dynamic features of China's photovoltaic listed companies in different periods: Based
on partial Granger causality network
Xiuming Li, Mei Sun, Dun Han, Cuixia Gao, Huizi He, and Issc Adjei Mensah

Citation: Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018); doi: 10.1063/1.5023131
View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5023131
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/rse/10/4
Published by the American Institute of Physics

Articles you may be interested in

Performance optimization of a photovoltaic solar cell-based hybrid system
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy 10, 044702 (2018); 10.1063/1.5028147
 JOURNAL OF RENEWABLE AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY 10, 045904 (2018)

Dynamic features of China’s photovoltaic listed companies

in different periods: Based on partial Granger causality
network
Xiuming Li,1,2 Mei Sun,2,a) Dun Han,1 Cuixia Gao,1 Huizi He,1
and Issc Adjei Mensah1
1
Institute of Applied System Analysis, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, Jiangsu, China
2
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu 215500,
Jiangsu, China
(Received 21 January 2018; accepted 21 June 2018; published online 23 July 2018)

As an important kind of renewable energy, China’s photovoltaic (PV) industry has

experienced many challenges in different historical stages. Many PV enterprises
emerge in the stock market, correlate with each other, and form China’s PV stock
market network. However, the mutual influence between any two companies in the
stock market is impacted by other enterprises and some external factors, which is
not considered in the previous studies. In order to study the direct interdependence
among China’s PV stock markets, we propose the partial Granger causality
network (PGCN) model. It is a first practice in the model to apply partial Granger
causality to quantify the direct interactions between stock returns. The daily
closing prices of 79 China’s PV enterprises are selected, and the whole research
period 2007.10.2–2016.10.3 is divided into four sub-periods according to three
important time nodes. The PGCN in the overall period and four sub-networks are
also constructed. Combined with the dynamic behaviors of networks’ topological
properties, the distribution of enterprise’s influence, the conductive force of enter-
prises, and the stability of the stock market are analyzed. Meanwhile, the regional
agglomeration development pattern is revealed, and top 10 influential enterprises
are identified. Published by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5023131

I. INTRODUCTION
In the past decade, the renewable energy sector has achieved sustainable growth in the
global economy. It is estimated that renewable energy will be the fastest growing part of global
energy demand in the next twenty years, with an annual growth rate of over 7% (IEA). There
were numerous renewable or clean energy companies emerging in the stock market. All the
companies are related to each other in the stock market, and therefore, their stock prices are
correlated. The correlations, which could reflect the deep influence, form the stock market net-
work. The maturity of the complex network theory according to Refs. 1–4 provided an effective
approach to interpret the correlations of the stock market. Gilmore et al.1 used Minimum
Spanning Tree (MST) to study the process of co-movements for 21 European Union stock mar-
ket indices. Eryigit et al.2 reported the results of investigating the properties of the networks
formed by the cross-correlations, which were based on the daily and weekly index changes of
143 stock market indices from 59 different countries. Roy et al.3 analyzed the temporal evolu-
tion of the correlation network and MST of global stock indices using weekly returns of 93
stock indices for a five-year period from 2006 to 2010. Jung et al.4 established a network struc-
ture of the Korean stock market with its MST through the correlation matrix. Several research
studies on the renewable energy stock market have also been conducted by many scholars.
Henriques et al.5 developed a four variable vector auto-regression model to investigate the

a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: sunm@ujs.edu.cn. Tel.: þ86 13775366657.

1941-7012/2018/10(4)/045904/24/$30.00 10, 045904-1 Published by AIP Publishing.

045904-2 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

empirical relationship among alternative energy stock prices, technology stock prices, oil prices,
and interest rates. Kumar et al.6 researched the relation among stock prices of clean energy
firms and oil and carbon markets based on vector autoregressive analysis. Sadorsky et al.7 used
multivariate GARCH models to model conditional correlations and to analyze the volatility
spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology companies.
Managi et al.8 applied Markov-switching vector autoregressive models to the economic system
consisting of oil prices, clean energy and technology stock prices, and interest rates. Kazemilari
et al.9 instituted a first analysis on renewable energy companies in stock exchange by using the
MST approach.
Since the 21st century, the rapid development has made China bear the dual pressures of
fossil energy shortage and environmental pollution. With the growth of the energy demand and
the deterioration of the environment, it is very necessary to change the energy structure from
high carbon energy to lower carbon energy. As a kind of very important clean energy, photo-
voltaic (PV) solar energy plays an important role in China’s sustainable development. In
China’s PV stock market, there are very useful correlative mechanisms among PV enterprises
for investing and building the optimal strategy. According to Refs. 1–4, the development of
stock market network theory provided an elucidative and simple way to reveal these correlative
patterns. As one of the most important techniques among other statistical physics, network anal-
ysis can be used to explore the financial market structural properties based on the topology of
the network.9 However, scholars have not paid too much attention to the importance of China’s
PV stock market in the financial market. Furthermore, there has been little research on under-
standing the behaviors of the topological properties of China’s PV stock market network and
interpretation of the network properties on industrial economics. Sun et al.10 used the Pearson
Correlation Coefficient (PCC) and the gravity model to characterize the interrelation between
China’s PV enterprises, by building a network using the threshold method. In the existing
research, the correlation between two enterprises in the PV stock market is represented by the
application of PCC, which is usually suitable for bivariate cases. There might be lack of theo-
retical basis for building the network due to artificially setting a threshold.
In the stock market, if two enterprises, which have no business or financial dealings, are
linked with other enterprises in the same stock block, there would be a misleading correlation
between them. Therefore, the effect of other enterprises should be eliminated. The stock market
may also be affected by some external and potential factors such as emergencies and natural
disasters. For instance, the Shanghai Composite Index fell below 1600 points within a month of
the “911” attacks in 2001; more than 860 stocks were limited down in stock markets of
Shanghai and Shenzhen within seven trading days after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007;
the stock market suddenly plunged so fast that it had to suspend trading in shares of 45 listed
companies after Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. Therefore, after the elimination of the effect of
other enterprises and some external and potential factors, if the movements of a company’s
stock price can lead to the movements of another company’s stock price, we say that there
exists a direct interdependence between the two companies. Granger causality (GC)11–14 can be
used to identify the causality in the dynamical system. From the econometric perspective, the
causality refers to the dependence between variables, that is, the variable as a result is deter-
mined by the variable as a cause. In general, GC is also suitable for the bivariate case. In the
multivariate case, the direct interdependence between two variables could be represented by
partial Granger causality (PGC)15 which can eliminate the effects of other variables and exter-
nal inputs in the system. It was pointed out that PGC can eliminate external and potential inputs
in the system better than conditional Granger causality.16 Also, PGC had been applied to repre-
sent the direct interdependence between variables in the biological, medical, and China’s indus-
trial power consumption system.17–19 Due to the deficiency of the conventional threshold
network, we employ the Bootstrap method20 to select relevant edges in the network. The
Bootstrap method is very important in evaluating and improving the statistical accuracy in sta-
tistical inference, and it is widely used in finance, foreign trade, biomedicine, and other
fields.21–23 Therefore, this paper utilizes PGC to describe the direct interdependence among
China’s PV stock markets and the Bootstrap method to construct the network.
045904-3 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

In the context of energy deficiency and environmental pollution, the PV solar market in
China is likely to endure to improve powerfully in the coming period and beyond. Thus, it is
crucial to capture the mechanism of China’s PV market for the improvement of the PV industry.
However, the PV stock market is a multi-variable complex system, and the interaction between
two stocks is vulnerable to the impact of various factors. Therefore, it is important to figure out
the direct interactions, and the findings generated can be very helpful for analyzing the structure
of China’s PV stock market. The partial Granger causality network (PGCN) model is proposed
in this paper, and three main contributions can be obtained. First, the direct interdependence
among China’s PV stock markets is studied in items of PGC, and the rationality of the relevant
edges in the network is judged by the Bootstrap method. Second, the understanding of networks’
topological properties is combined with the specific characteristic of enterprises, incentive poli-
cies, and industrial chain. Third, the regional agglomeration development pattern of China’s PV
industry is revealed, and the most influential PV enterprises are identified in this paper.
The outlines of this paper are as follows: in Sec. II, the proposed model and the main meth-
ods used in this paper are introduced in detail; in Sec. III, the topological properties of PGCN
and the networks of different periods are discussed in detail, and we try to interpret the findings
upon industrial economics; finally, the research findings are concluded briefly in Sec. IV.

II. METHODOLOGY
A. Granger causality model
In practical applications,19,24 GC is based on the regression model as follow:

X
p
Xt ¼ ai Xti þ ut ; (1)
i¼1

X
p X
p
Xt ¼ bi Xti þ ci Yti þ vt ; (2)
i¼1 i¼1

where X is the stock return series of a certain PV enterprise which wanted to find the cause, Y
is the stock return series of other PV enterprises except X used to test whether it is the cause of
X, p is the lag value, and ut and vt are the white noises. The residuals ut and vt are assumed to
be mutually independent and individually with zero mean and constant variance. The null
hypothesis is
H0 : Y does not the Granger cause of X (c1 ¼ c2 ¼    ¼ cp ¼ 0).
The least squares method is used to estimate the coefficients ai , bi , and ci . According to
the Granger causality theory, Y cannot Granger cause X if and only if the coefficients ci are all
zero.
The F-test could be used to judge the Granger causality as follows:

ð RSS0  RSS1 Þ=p

FY!X ¼  Fð p; n  2pÞ; (3)
RSS1 =ðn  2pÞ

where RSS0 is the quadratic sum of the residual of Eq. (1), RSS1 is the quadratic sum of the
residual of Eq. (2), n is the length of the data, and p is the lag value. Y Granger causes X if
and only if FY!X > Fa ðp; n  2pÞ, where a is the selected significant level.
In order to find the Granger causal relationships among variables, the least squares method
which depends on the lag value p is used to estimate Eqs. (1) and (2). The order of the model
p can be determined by minimizing the AIC25 (Akaike Information Criterion) defined as

2m2 p
AICð pÞ ¼ 2 ln ðjrjÞ þ ; (4)
n
where r is the estimated noise covariance matrix, m is the dimension of the stationary stochas-
tic process, and n is the length of the data.
045904-4 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

B. Partial Granger causality model

According to Refs. 15, 18, and 19, the joint autoregressive expression of the system of two
variables X and Z can be written as

X
1 X
1
Xt ¼ a1i Xti þ b1i Zti þ e1t ; (5)
i¼1 i¼1

X
1 X
1
Zt ¼ c1i Xti þ d1i Zti þ e2t : (6)
i¼1 i¼1

The noise covariance matrix for the system is also expressed as

 
varðe1t Þ covðe1t ; e2t Þ
S¼ : (7)
covðe1t ; e2t Þ varðe2t Þ

For a system involving three variables X, Z, and Y, where Y is the time series of other
industries except X and Z, the vector autoregressive expression can be written as

X
1 X
1 X
1
Xt ¼ a2i Xti þ b2i Yti þ c2i Zti þ e3t ; (8)
i¼1 i¼1 i¼1

X
1 X
1 X
1
Yt ¼ d2i Xti þ e2i Yti þ f2i Zti þ e4t ; (9)
i¼1 i¼1 i¼1

X
1 X
1 X
1
Zt ¼ g2i Xti þ h2i Yti þ k2i Zti þ e5t : (10)
i¼1 i¼1 i¼1

The noise covariance matrix for the above system on the other hand is represented as
2 3
varðe3t Þ covðe3t ; e4t Þ covðe3t ; e5t Þ
6 covðe4t ; e5t Þ 7
R ¼ 4 covðe3t ; e4t Þ varðe4t Þ 5: (11)
covðe3t ; e5t Þ covðe4t ; e5t Þ varðe5t Þ

To eliminate the effect of Z, the PGC between X and Y can be calculated by portioning the
noise covariance matrices S and R as follows:
" #  
varðe1t Þ jcovðe1t ; e2t Þ S11 jS12
S¼ ¼ ; (12)
covðe1t ; e2t Þjvarðe2t Þ S21 jS22
" #  
varðe3t Þ jcovðe3t ; e5t Þ RXY jRXYZ
R¼ ¼ : (13)
covðe3t ; e5t Þj varðe5t Þ RZXY jRZZ

By eliminating the impact of Z, the measure of partial causality as to whether Y causes X

can be expressed as
!
S11  S12 S1
22 S21
FY!XjZ ¼ ln : (14)
RXY  RXYZ R1ZZ RZXY

In practice, Z can be more than one variable in the model.

In solving the partial Granger causality of any two companies among the 79 PV enter-
prises, the procedure for solving the partial Granger model of 79 PV enterprises is to set the
045904-5 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

matrix S and matrix R to be the re-combinational matrix of the noise covariance matrix, where
S is a matrix which is 78  78 and R is a matrix which is 79  79.
We define the first row and the first column of matrix S as S11 , the first row and the second
column to the first row and the 78th column of matrix S as S12 , the second row and the first
column to the 78th row and the first column of matrix S as S21 , and the rest part as S22 . A simi-
lar way is applied to the segmentation of matrix R.
As a result, we calculate the partial causality of every two PV enterprises according to Eq. (14).
From this procedure we calculate the partial causality between each pair of 79 PV enterprises by elimi-
nating the influence of the other 77 PV enterprises.

C. Bootstrap method
In this paper, the Bootstrap method18,19,23 is utilized to test the rationality of the PGC
between each pair of 79 PV enterprises. Considering the stock return dataset of 79 PV enter-
prises E ¼ fX1 ; X2 ; …; X79 g, a synthetic sample dataset E ¼ fX1 ; X2 ; …; X79

g can be obtained
by the re-sampling technique. Then, the set of all possible partial causality values between any
two variables of E can be calculated. To test the partial causality between any two enterprises,
we make a total simulation of 200 times by re-sampling in this paper. Finally, we can obtain a
confidence interval for the PGC between each pair of 79 PV enterprises, and the PGC can be
tested based on whether the confidence interval contains zero. For a detailed process of the
Bootstrap method, the literature studies 18 and 19 can be referred to.

D. Granger causality network (GCN)

According to 2.1, GC of any two stock return series among 79 PV enterprises is calculated
and tested by using the F-test. In GCN, the node represents the PV enterprise, the directed edge
represents the fact that a certain PV enterprise is the Granger cause of other PV enterprises,
and the value of GC is the weight of the directed edge. The general term of the unsymmetrical
weight matrix W is wij ¼ Fi!j , where Fi!j represents PV enterprise i which is the Granger
cause of PV enterprise j, and wij is the weight of directed edge eij . The causality matrix W has
significant character in economic physics as the key basis of stock data. In matrix W, the row
elements represent the enterprises as causes, whereas the column elements represent the enter-
prises as results. The stock’s market movement of enterprise i cannot lead to the movement of
enterprise j if wij ¼ 0, and on the other hand, the stock’s market movement of enterprise i can
lead to the movement of enterprise j if wij > 0.

E. Partial Granger causality network

According to 2.2, the PGC of any two stock return series among 79 PV enterprises is
calculated and tested by using the Bootstrap method. The PGCN which is also a directed and
weighted network is constructed as compared to GCN in Sec. II D. The general term of the
unsymmetrical weight matrix W  is wij ¼ Fi!j , where Fi!j represents PV enterprise i which is
the partial Granger cause of PV enterprise j and wij is the weight of directed edge eij . The par-
tial causality matrix W  also has significant character in economic physics as the key basis of
stock data. In matrix W  , the row elements represent the enterprises as causes and the column
elements represent the enterprises as results. The stock price’s movement of enterprise i cannot
lead to the movement of enterprise j if wij ¼ 0, whereas the stock price’s movement of enter-
prise i can lead to the movement of enterprise j if wij > 0.

F. The topological properties of the network

1. The node’s strength
In weighted networks, the node’s strength can not only demonstrate its neighbor nodes’
number but also consider the weight of each linked edge.26,27 In directed and weighted net-
works, the in-strength and the out-strength of node vi can be defined as follows:
045904-6 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

8
>
> X
N
>
> sin ¼ wji
>
< i
j¼1
(15)
>
> XN
>
> s out
¼ wij ;
>
: i j¼1

where wij is the weight of the directed edge from nodes vi to vj . The strength of node vi is the
sum of the in-strength and the out-strength of node vi , that is,

si ¼ sin out
i þ si : (16)

In PGCN, the node with greater out-strength indicates that the stock price’s movement of
the enterprise has a greater impact on the movement of other stocks’ prices, whilst the node
with greater in-strength indicates that the stock price is more susceptible to be impacted by the
movement of other stocks’ prices. Therefore, the node’s out-strength can be used to describe
the influence of enterprise in China’s PV stock market.
The out-strength distribution of nodes can be defined as follows:

sout
Pðsout Þ ¼ i
; (17)
Sout

where Sout is the total out-strength of all the nodes and sout
i is the out-strength of node vi . The
accumulative out-strength distribution of nodes can be defined as follows:
X 0
Psout ¼ Pðsout Þ: (18)
sout0 sout

In PGCN, the out-strength distribution of nodes can be used to represent the distribution of
influential enterprises in China’s PV stock market. The accumulative out-strength distribution
of nodes is another approach to express the distribution of influential enterprises.

2. Betweenness centrality
Betweenness is an important indicator to measure the nodes’ centrality in the network.28
The betweenness of a node reflects the number of the shortest paths a node passes through this
node within the network. Specifically, the betweenness of node vi can be defined as follows:

X ni
kt
Bi ¼ ; (19)
g
k6¼i6¼t kt

where gkt is the number of the shortest paths from nodes vk to vt and nikt is the number of the
shortest paths from node vk to node vt which pass through node vi .
The node’s betweenness depicts the ability of a node to transmit and control information
along the shortest path in the network. In PGCN, the node with large betweenness represents
the enterprise whose stock price’s movement can be quickly transferred to other stocks’ prices.
Therefore, the betweenness of the node can be used to describe the conductive force of enter-
prise in China’s PV stock market.

3. Distance
The distance dij between nodes vi and vj is defined as the length of the shortest path
between the two nodes, where the shortest path is a path in which the number of its constituent
edges is minimized. The average path length L is defined as the average distance between any
045904-7 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

two nodes.26,28 The computation of the average length in a directed network is given by the
relation

1 X
L¼ dij ; (20)
NðN  1Þ i6¼j

where N is the total number of network nodes.

In PGCN, the distance between two enterprises is the shortest conductive path length of
the direct interdependence. If the distance between enterprises A and B is 2, it means that there
exits another enterprise C, the stock price’s movement of A can lead to the stock price’s move-
ment of C, and the stock’s movement of C can lead to the stock’s movement of B. On the other
hand, if the average distance of network is 3, it means that the stock price’s movement of any
enterprise can be conducted to another enterprise’s stock price averagely through two enter-
prises. Therefore, the average distance of the network can be used to describe the stability of
the stock market network.

III. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

A. Data
This paper chooses the daily stock closing prices (Source: Yahoo Finance) of China’s PV
listed enterprises during the period of 2007.10.2–2016.10.3. These data will be used to analyze
the development and transformation of the solar market in China after the policy “Medium and
long-term development plan for renewable energy” issued in 2007. Due to the same data length
that are required for PGC, 79 enterprises are selected from all China’s PV listed companies
(including listed overseas, a total of about 110), which were listed before 2007.10 and cover the
whole PV industrial chain. The length of the data employed in the study is 1736 after data
extraction. The main information about the 79 PV companies, including stock code, name, main
business, location of industrial chain, and market capitalization, are introduced in Appendix
Table IV. However, there are still some economic and policy factors that have an impact on
China’s PV market. These economic and policy factors include European Debt Crisis (2009.12),
the “anti-dumping and anti-subsidy” policy of America (2012.11), and the “PV power generation
construction implementation plan” issued by National Energy Administration (2015.03). In order
to study the influence of the above important events on China’s PV market, further analysis was
conducted based on the following four different periods: 2007.10.2–2009.12.30,
2010.1.1–2012.12.31, 2013.1.2–2014.12.31, and 2015.1.2–2016.10.3. The new installed capacity
and the growth rate per year since 2007 are shown in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, China’s PV
industry has achieved a leap-style development since 2007. Meanwhile, the occurrence of differ-
ent economic and policy events has had different effects on the development of the PV industry.
Since GC and PGC are based on the VAR model, the time series should be stable. Otherwise,
it would result in spurious regression. We consider the return series ri ¼ ln ðxiþ1 Þ  ln ðxi Þ, where
xi is the stock closing price at day i. All the return values of adftest were obtained as 1 after using
Matlab to test the stability of the return times series of the 79 PV enterprises. This therefore means
that the return series meet the requirements of stability.

B. GCN, PGCN, and networks in different periods

According to the methods introduced in Sec. II, we built two types of networks based on
the daily closing prices of the 79 PV enterprises during the overall period together with the
four different sub-periods. These networks include GCN, GCN1, GCN2, GCN3, and GCN4 and
PGCN, PGCN1, PGCN2, PGCN3, and PGCN4, respectively.
Figure 2 shows GCN and PGCN in the overall period, where the size of the node repre-
sents the out-strength and the thickness of the edge denotes the weight. It is clear that GCN is
much thicker than PGCN, and nodes in GCN have similar size, while the size of nodes in
PGCN has a big difference. The main reason is that that there is a mixture of direct and
045904-8 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 1. The new installed capacity and the growth rate per year during 2007–2016. (Note: Fig. 1 is drawn by the authors,
and the data used in Fig. 1 are downloaded from the open website CPIA: http://www.chinapv.org.cn/.)

FIG. 2. (a) GCN in the overall period and (b) PGCN in the overall period.

indirect interdependences among enterprises in GCN, and only the direct interdependence
remains in PGCN.
Table I also displays the graph density of GCN, PGCN, and networks in different periods.
The graph density of PGCN as shown in Table I is much smaller than that of GCN. This result
indicates that the interrelation between enterprises is largely affected by indirect factors, and
the proportion of the direct interdependence is small.

TABLE I. The graph density of GCN and PGCN in each period.

Period The graph density of GCN The graph density of PGCN

Overall 0.497 0.039

2007.10–2009.12 0.457 0.072
2010.1–2012.12 0.495 0.125
2013.1–2014.12 0.483 0.124
2015.1–2016.10 0.489 0.096
045904-9 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

C. The distribution of enterprise’s influence

The accumulative out-strength distributions of GCN and PGCN in the double logarithm
coordinate are shown in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b). Obviously, the points mainly located at the bottom
of Fig. 3(a) could not clearly figure out the distribution of enterprise’s influence. As shown in
Fig. 3(b), PGCN and four sub-networks have obvious heterogeneity. This means that PGCN
can distinguish the size of enterprise’s influence in China’s PV stock market directly and objec-
tively. The result from Fig. 3(b) therefore leads to the discussion of the topological properties
of networks only in PGCN and the four sub-networks.
The out-strength distribution is a typical method to express nodes’ out-strength. The net-
work is said to be a scale-free network if the out-strength distribution and the accumulative
out-strength distribution obey the power-law distribution with indices c and c  1, respectively.
Based on the accumulative out-strength distributions of four sub-networks, the functions (see

FIG. 3. (a) The double logarithmic plot of the accumulative out-strength distributions of GCN and sub-networks. (b) The
double logarithmic plot of the accumulative out-strength distributions of PGCN and sub-networks.
045904-10 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 4. The fitting function of the accumulative out-strength distribution of PGCN in each period in the double logarithmic
coordinate.

Fig. 4) were calculated. As shown in Fig. 4, the four sub-networks have scale-free characteris-
tics. Table II shows the value of c and R2 in four PGCN of different periods. As shown in
Table II, the values of c are 2.675, 2.378, 2.165, and 2.603, respectively, whilst the mean value
of R2 is 0.826. This result generally indicates that the four sub-networks are generally stable
scale-free networks with time going by, meaning that only a few PV enterprises have strong
direct influence and dominate the structure of the network, while most of the PV companies
have relatively low influence. In the scale-free network, the higher the value of c is the better
heterogeneity the network has. Therefore, PGCN1 has the best heterogeneity among four net-
works, whilst the heterogeneity of PGCN4 rebounds after continuous decline in PGCN2 and
PGCN3. The decrease in a network’s heterogeneity indicates that the influence of most influen-
tial enterprises declines, and the gap of enterprise’s influence narrows in China’s PV stock
market, whilst the increase in a network’s heterogeneity indicates that there emerge a few enter-
prises with great influence, and the gap of enterprise’s influence widens.
Stimulated by the international PV market and a series of domestic incentive policies, China’s
PV enterprises have been developed rapidly with few enterprises emerging with high influence in
domestic and international PV markets such as 77 (Suntech) and 76 (LDK). Hence, the heteroge-
neity of the network during 2007.10–2009.12 becomes the highest. However, the PV market
abroad has been weakened since American subprime mortgage crisis (2008) and European debt
crisis (2009). In order to protect the domestic PV manufacturing industry, the United States and
Europe carried out the “double anti” policy to China successively, which blocked the sale of
China. 77 (Suntech) also suffered from high cost, low capacity utilization, rising the debt ratio and
other troubles. In March 2013, 77 (Suntech) declared bankruptcy due to serious deficit and

TABLE II. The value of c and R2 of PGCN in each period.

Network ðc  1Þ R2

PGCN1 1.675 0.901

PGCN2 1.378 0.735
PGCN3 1.165 0.783
PGCN4 1.603 0.885
Mean 1.455 0.826
045904-11 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

pressure of debts. As early as 2012, 76 (LDK) already had management problems because of the
financial crisis and overcapacity. The main reason for the bankruptcy and reorganization of 76
(LDK) was the expansion in debts which just focused on scale and capacity but lacked core tech-
nology. China’s PV industry underwent a new round of adjustment during 2010–2014. The enter-
prises with strong influence in the network almost suffered from the management problem, which
led to the continuous decline of network’s heterogeneity of PGCN2 and PGCN3. In recent two
years, the demand of the domestic PV market has grown continually with the implementation of
the PV “front-runner” program, poverty alleviation projects, and the development of the distributed
PV power station. Due to the expansion of the domestic PV market and the R&D of core technol-
ogy, China’s PV industry began to undergo the next development upsurge. 75 (JASO) was
awarded as “2015 China’s PV “front-runner” outstanding components enterprise” by CQC. 78
(Trina Solar) was also among the world’s top 20 renewable energy companies in 2016. Some
enterprises with high influence such as 75 and 78 have emerged on account of the national incen-
tive policies. Therefore, the network’s heterogeneity of PGCN4 is enhanced.
Since 2000, the government of China has issued a series of national policies and regula-
tions that actively promote the R&D, production, and application of the PV industry. Based on
the results from the above analysis with respect to the heterogeneity of four sub-networks, the
rise and development of China’s PV industry are closely related to the national PV policies.
Table III lists China’s major PV incentive and subsidy policies since 2009. The PV industry is
a typical policy-driven industry. For example, the “Golden Sun Pilot Project” supported over
700 different PV power generation projects and independent PV systems for regions, which
played an important role in launching a domestic PV market, improving PV technology and
eliminating grid-connected policy barriers. In 2011, the “Notice on Perfecting Feed-in Tariff
Policy of Solar PV Power Generation” determined the feed-in tariff benchmark of national uni-
fied solar PV power generation. The purpose of the PV “front-runner” program was to improve
the overall level of the industry from the aspects of product, manufacturing, application, stan-
dard, and test. If technology is not the main driving force, the policy should continue to escort
China’s PV industry. The Chinese government should therefore continue to play a key role,
expand the domestic market, and provide long-term financial support and strong policy support
for the R&D of technology, so as to promote the further development of China’s PV industry.
TABLE III. China’s major PV incentive and subsidy policies since 2009.

Year Publishing department Policy

2009 Ministry of Finance and Construction Interim Measures for the Administration of Financial
Subsidies for Solar Photovoltaic Building Applications
2009 Ministry of Finance, National Energy Interim Measures for the Administration of Financial
Administration Subsidy Funds for Golden Sun Pilot Project
2010 Ministry of Finance Notice on Interim Measures for the Administration of
Financial Subsidy Funds for the Application of Solar
Photovoltaic Building Applications
2011 National Development and Reform Commission Notice on Perfecting Feed-in Tariff Policy of Solar
2012 State Grid Corporation of China Opinions on Grid-Connected Distributed PV Power
Generation Services
2013 Ministry of Finance Notice on the Implementation of the Subsidy Policy for
the Distributed PV Power Generation
2013 National Development and Reform Commission Notice on Playing the Role of Price Leverage to
Promote the Healthy Development of PV Industry
2013 National Energy Administration, China Opinions on supporting the financial services of distrib-
Development Bank uted PV power generation
2014 National Energy Administration, Poverty Implementation of PV poverty alleviation project
Alleviation Office of the State Council
2015 National Energy Administration PV “front-runner” program
2016 National Development and Reform Commission The acquisition management approach of full protection
of renewable energy power generation
045904-12 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

D. The relationship between enterprise’s conductive force and influence

As shown in Figs. 5(a)–5(d), most of the points are located at the left bottom of the figures,
indicating that most of the enterprises have small influence and conductive force. Meanwhile,
five nodes with the largest betweenness are basically concentrated in the upper right corner of
the figures, indicating that enterprises with large conductive force in four sub-networks also
have large influence. This therefore implies that, if the enterprise with large influence and con-
ductive force becomes bankrupt or develops well, this impaction (maybe positive or negative)
would pass quickly to others through this company (existence of the chain reaction phenome-
non). For example, as shown in Fig. 5(c), 77 (Suntech, bankrupted in 2013.03) has both large
betweenness and out-strength in PGCN3. The negative impact of the bankruptcy of 77
(Suntech) would pass to other enterprises quickly, which resulted in an adverse impact on the
development of the entire PV industry. Therefore, the influential enterprises should strengthen
the R&D of core technology and invest rationally to avoid surplus capacity.
The government should therefore strengthen the support of the PV enterprises with great
influence, so as to avoid the negative chain reaction brought by the bankruptcy of these enter-
prises. The PV “front-runner” program was issued in 2015, with the purpose of guiding the
technology progress and industrial upgrading through the implementation of the PV power gen-
eration demonstration base and the application of new technology demonstration projects. Other
enterprises will be driven to upgrade the quality of their products and transfer efficiency if
some “front runner” enterprises become the industrial benchmark, thereby promoting healthy
competition and development of the whole industry.

E. The stability of the stock market network

Based on the Floyd algorithm,29 we calculate the distances between any two nodes, and the
different path length distribution in PGCN was calculated [see Figs. 6(a) and 6(b)]. As shown
in Figs. 6(a) and 6(b), the distances between the nodes are 2, 3, 4 and 5, accounting for
71.94%, whilst the average distance is 4.325. We also calculate the distribution of different
path lengths in PGCN of each period [see Figs. 7(a) and 7(b)]. Figure 7(a) indicates that the
average distance of PGCN1 is 3.024, and the distances between the nodes are 2, 3, and 4,
accounting for 83.08%. Additionally, the average distance of PGCN2 is 2.337 with the distance
between the nodes being 1, 2, and 3, accounting for 91.64%. Figure 7(b) further indicates that
the average distance of PGCN3 is 2.902, and the distances between the nodes are also 2, 3, and
4, accounting for 82.56%, whist the average distance of PGCN4 is 4.011, and the distances
between the nodes are also 2, 3, and 4, accounting for 88.14%.
The average distances of four sub-networks are 3.024, 2.337, 2.902, and 4.011. The smaller
the average distance of the network is, the more vulnerable the stock market will be and the
more likely the sudden events and other factors will lead to the co-movement of the whole stock
network. Due to the high dependence on imports about partial core equipment and primary raw
materials for some time, China’s PV production line lacks of diversity and homogeneous prod-
ucts are severely competitive. China’s PV industry, as a rapid contraction of the international
market, has experienced severe capacity of surplus with respect to the local government attempt-
ing to drive the economy and financial industry investing blindly to obtain high returns. The
expanding debts and pursuing the scale economy effect resulted in the enterprises with insuffi-
cient flexibility when the market was in depression and unable to adjust the operation strategy in
time. The surplus capacity directly caused vicious competition and fierce price war, which
directly causes the fragility of the stock market. Therefore, the average distance of PGCN2
decreases. The typical example is 79 (Yingli). 79 (Yingli) began to focus on the vertical inte-
grated operation pattern from 2008 and has formed the most complete industrial chain. In 2012,
in order to alleviate the management pressure, 79 (Yingli) began to construct the PV power sta-
tion which is located in the downstream of the PV industry. This was undoubtedly dangerous for
79 (Yingli), which already had financial problems. Coupled with the low-price strategy, 79
(Yingli) has been in losses since 2010. 73 (China Sunergy) invested heavily in the project of
045904-13 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 5. The relationship between nodes’ betweenness and out-strength in PGCN of each period.
045904-14 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 6. (a) The distance between any two nodes in PGCN and (b) the different path length distribution in PGCN.

polycrystalline silicon to become the company with a complete industrial chain. However, due
to the impact of the global financial crisis, the prices of polycrystalline silicon tumbled, which
caused a massive loss of 73 (China Sunergy). Since 2012, all enterprises have fallen into the
losses. China’s PV industry has been in a transition period, and this period also witnessed the
merger and reorganization of enterprises within the industry. China’s PV industry, as a rapid
contraction of the international market, has experienced severe capacity of surplus with respect
to the local government attempting to drive the economy and financial industry investing blindly
to obtain high returns. Therefore, the average distance of PGCN4 increases, indicating that the
robustness of the stock market increases.

F. The geographical characteristic of China’s PV industry

Figures 8(a)–8(d) show the geographical distribution of the selected 79 China’s PV enter-
prises; the depth of the color denotes the number of PV companies in each province and region;
ten enterprises’ ID with the largest out-strength, and betweenness marked in red and blue fonts,
respectively. As shown in Fig. 8, China’s PV companies are mainly located in Jiangsu,
045904-15 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 7. (a) The different path length distribution of PGCN1 and PGCN2 and (b) the different path length distribution of
PGCN3 and PGCN4.

Guangdong, Hebei, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing, and Sichuan, with only few PV enterprises in
the vast western region. Figure 9 also gives the evolution of ten companies with the greatest
influence and conductive force in China’s PV industry. It can be found that the important enter-
prises dispersed geographically in PGCN1 and aggregated more and more to Jing-Jin-Ji,
Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta as time goes on. This is due to the fact that the
development of regional agglomeration contributes to the decline of production costs, the coop-
erative R&D between enterprises, and the reduction of transportation costs. It also reflects that
China’s PV industry already has a certain scale after the integration of several years.
Meanwhile, China’s PV industrial chain also has important characteristics in the regional
distribution. The PV industrial chain consists of 5 parts: silicon material, silicon wafer, battery,
components, and application system. The upstream of the PV industrial chain is the production
of raw materials and equipment suppliers, known as raw material production; the midstream is
the production of cells and modules, known as the cell manufacturing process, whereas the
downstream is the production of various application products and the power generation system,
known as the integrated system (see Fig. 9).
Jing-Jin-Ji: The main products of this region are the silicon material and silicon wafer. 75
(JA Solar) and 79 (Yingli) are important enterprises which belong to the upstream of the indus-
trial chain and also located in this region. By the end of 2016, the annual capacity of silicon
wafer for 75 (JA Solar) was 2.5 GW and was expected to expand to 3.0 W in 2017. 79 (Yingli)
has already been among the international enterprises of polycrystalline silicon production since
2009. The technical barrier of the upstream enterprises is relatively high, and the scale effect of
production is large. The production level of upstream restricts the production of other links of
045904-16 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

(a)

(b)

FIG. 8. The geographical distribution of the selected 79 China’s PV enterprises.

the industrial chain. However, the disadvantage of China in this link has inhibited the develop-
ment of the PV industry.
Yangtze River Delta: There are 26 enterprises located in this region among the selected 79
enterprises (see Appendix Table IV), and the main products are cells and modules, where 77
(Suntech) and 78 (Trina Solar) are important enterprises located in the midstream. 77 (Suntech)
was named as the world’s top ten solar cell manufacturers by PHOTON International in 2004
and became one of the world’s four largest solar cell production bases. By the end of 2016, the
cumulative total shipments of PV modules of 78 (Trina Solar) exceeded 23 GW. Products cov-
ered more than 70 countries and regions worldwide, ranking first in the world. The technical
barrier in the production link of the battery is relatively low compared with the upstream. The
link of the component has the characteristics of low technology content, low investment, short
construction period, high pollution, and high energy consumption, and it is a typical labor-
intensive industry. Due to the low entry threshold, this link has attracted a large number of
enterprises, the fastest growing and the most competitive link in the PV industrial chain.
045904-17 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

(c)

(d)

FIG. 8. (Continued.)

Pearl River Delta: Products of PV enterprises in this region are mainly system integration
applications. There are 11 enterprises located in Guangdong province among the selected 79
enterprises with seven of them belonging to the downstream industry (see the Appendix Table
IV). The system integrators include manufacturers of electrical components in PV systems,
such as inverters, controllers, and battery manufacturers. For example, the main product of 3
(Fangda group) is the PV curtain wall, and the main product of 24 (Clou Electronics) is the PV
inverter. The downstream link of power generation includes off-grid and grid-connected power
generation enterprises. The resource barrier of grid-connected power generation in this region is
higher and is mainly monopolized by the state.
Generally speaking, the distributions of the most influential enterprises and China’s PV
industrial chain show the regional agglomeration development pattern, which is mainly distrib-
uted in Jing-Jin-Ji, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta. Although the regional agglom-
eration pattern has certain advantages, such as lower production and transportation costs, as
well as the R&D among companies, there are still some problems in terms of the long-term
045904-18 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

FIG. 9. The structure diagram of the photovoltaic industrial chain.

sustainable development. Actually, the western area of China, such as Xinjiang and Inner
Mongolia, has vast territory and abundant sunlight. In the future, if many problems, such as the
PV grid-connected technology, storage, transmission, and institutions, can be solved, then the
combination of western and eastern regions should contribute to the sustainable development of
PV solar energy in China.

G. The analysis of influential enterprises

The results from Sec. III C indicate that the distribution of influential enterprises obeys the
power law distribution in PGCN. This implies that only minority PV enterprises have strong
influence, and most of the companies have low influence in China’s PV stock market. As
shown in Fig. 2(b), the top 10 influential enterprises are 70, 75, 78, 59, 10, 47, 66, 79, 74, and
17, respectively. Some of the top 10 influential enterprises are analyzed in order to find the
commonality.
75 (JA Solar) is headquartered in Ningjin, Hebei Province. 75 (JA Solar) was established
on May 2005 and listed on NASDAQ on February 2007. It has some advantages in technology
and the structure of the industrial chain. 75 (JA Solar) has been committed to the innovation
and development of PV technology and is the company with mass production and sales of the
high-efficiency PV cell. 75 (JA Solar) also focuses on optimizing the assembly process of PV
modules, improving components’ efficiency and reliability and innovating independently on the
existing advanced technologies of batteries. 75 (JA Solar) based on the vertical integration pat-
tern has formed a complete industrial chain with silicon wafers, batteries, and components and
also participated in the construction of the PV power station. However, its focus is the produc-
tion of batteries and components. Thanks to the leading technology of batteries and compo-
nents, 75 (JA Solar) has significantly reduced the cost of production while improving the effi-
ciency of energy conversion, maintaining the superiority in economic and environmental
protection. 75 (JA Solar) also participates actively in the PV “front-runner” program, with five
products of components meeting the requirements of the “front-runner.” In the first pilot dem-
onstration project of 950 MW in Datong Shanxi, 75 (JA Solar) provided 420 MW of compo-
nents, with a supply of nearly 50%. Meanwhile, 75 (JA Solar) has made response to the PV
poverty alleviation policy, participated in the PV poverty alleviation project.
78 (Trina) is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It was founded in 1997 and listed on
NYSE in 2006. 78 (Trina) is a manufacturer specializing in the production of crystalline silicon
045904-19 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

modules. The products include various types of monocrystalline and polycrystalline PV mod-
ules, with output power ranging from 165 W to 230 W. The accumulative component shipments
of 78 (Trina) occupied more than 10% of the market share by the end of 2016. 78 (Trina) was
awarded the “front-runner” certification of the dual-glass PV module by CQC in 2016. As
China’s leading PV system integrator, 78 (Trina) continued to innovate technologically and suc-
cessfully build the brand of integrated solutions for smart PV systems. The power station busi-
nesses of 78 (Trina) are all over China, UK, the United States, and other Asia-Europe countries,
including the design, procurement, construction, installation, testing, operation, and maintenance
of the solar power station.
79 (Yingli) is headquartered in Baoding, Hebei Province. In 1999, the company carried out
the first demonstration project of 3 MW polycrystalline silicon cells and application system in
China. It was listed on the NYSE on June 2007 and has the most complete PV industrial chain
in the world. 79 (Yingli) was one of the pioneers of China’s PV industry. It was the first manu-
facturer of polysilicon cells approved by NDRC, which has filled the gap in the commercial
production of polysilicon cells. It was also one of the first solar manufacturers to be certified by
UL, IEC, and TUV. The products of 79 (Yingli) covered the entire PV industrial chain from
the silicon material, silicon ingot, silicon wafer, battery, and component to the system integra-
tion. 79 (Yingli) has the leading low production cost, with the cost of the non-silicon material
being the lowest in the industry. 79 (Yingli) relies on the National Key Laboratory of PV
Technology and other three national research and innovation platforms. It has applied for a total
of 13 international PCT patent applications, 2056 Chinese patents, and 1577 patent licensing.
As the chief and staff editor, 79 (Yingli) has participated in 77 items of international, national,
and industrial standards. 79 (Yingli) has undertaken 23 national science and technology proj-
ects, including the national 973 and 863 projects and 108 provincial science and technology
projects. It has been rated as the national innovation-oriented pilot enterprise and ranked first in
the patent application and authorization for years in the domestic PV industry.
74 (Hanwha) is headquartered in Qidong, Jiangsu Province, and listed on NASDAQ. 74
(Hanwha) has a production capacity of 6.8 GW battery and 6.8 GW solar module. This enter-
prise is the largest battery manufacturer and is one of the world’s largest solar component man-
ufacturers. 74 (Hanwha) is committed to products’ improvement and upgrading. Additionally,
74 (Hanwha) is a leading professional enterprise in high-quality solar modules in China’s PV
industry. 74 (Hanwha) won the “2015 solar industry award” for its Q.PLUS solar module based
on Q.ANTUM technology. In 2017, 74 (Hanwha) was awarded as the “Best Component” by
DNV-GL.
Based on the results from the analysis with respect to the most influential enterprises, the
technological innovation and R&D ability of China’s PV industry have been greatly improved.
The production efficiency of batteries and component, as well as the production technology of
polycrystalline silicon, has reached the international level. To improve the competitiveness and
risk tolerance of the industry, many PV enterprises have completed the vertical integration of
the industrial chain. Meanwhile, the supportive policies of the state have been positively
responded by enterprises, which have promoted the development of China’s PV industry.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
The system of China’s PV stock market is extremely complex, and the interactions are con-
tinuously evolving through the impacts of various factors. In this paper, to quantify and figure
out the real interactions among PV stock markets, the PGCN model is proposed. In this model,
PGC is utilized to represent the direct interdependence between two companies’ stock returns,
which allows an insight into the actual relation among PV stock markets by eliminating the
influence of other stocks and some external and potential factors. Then, the Bootstrap method is
used to select relevant edges in the network, which might guarantee the rationality of the partial
causality among enterprises. In this study, the daily stock closing prices of 79 China’s PV listed
enterprises are selected. According to three important historical time nodes, the whole study
period 2007.10.2–2016.10.3 is divided into four sub-periods. Then, four sub-networks are
045904-20 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

constructed. The empirical results obtained from the proposed model can help energy investors
to make decision about market behavior and thus to avoid investment risk.
The distribution of enterprises’ influence shows that four sub-networks are all scale-free
networks, which means that most of the enterprises have relatively low influence and only a
few enterprises have relatively high influence. Specifically, the evolution of the power exponent
c indicates that the development of China’s PV stock market is sensitive to policy changes,
whilst the enterprises with large conductive force usually have large influence. Meanwhile, the
evolution of the average distances of four sub-networks indicates that the robustness of China’s
PV stock market is related to the ability of R&D and the diversity of products. The PV market
regulators and policy makers therefore can take these market characteristics into account when
adjusting the incentive policies.
Based on the enterprises with the largest out-strength and betweenness, it can be found that
the important enterprises are mainly concentrated in Jing-Jin-Ji, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl
River Delta. China’s PV industrial chain is also distributed in the three regions. As we all
know, the eastern region has a high degree of economic internationalization and has great
advantages in transportation, technology, and foreign trade. However, from the perspective of
sustainable development, there are still some problems needed to be considered. Due to the
vast territory and abundant sunlight in the western region, the integration of western and eastern
regions should contribute to the development of China’s PV industry. Meanwhile, top 10 influ-
ential enterprises are identified, and they are 70, 75, 78, 59, 10, 47, 66, 79, 74, and 17, respec-
tively. With respect to the analysis of the most influential enterprises, the production technology
and efficiency of some PV products have reached the international level, and the supportive
policies have played an incentive effect to the PV enterprises. The empirical results obtained in
this study are informative and valuable, which can provide us a comprehensive understanding
of the structure and mechanism of China’s PV market.
Finally, the model proposed in this paper could be widely used in multi-variable complex
systems to thoroughly test its generalization and validity. This study has chosen the listed PV
companies in China, and in this regard, future research studies could choose companies in spe-
cific regions or specific countries, such as Europe, Asia, and America. In addition, other types
of renewable energy companies could be selected in future studies, such as wind power and
hydro energy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No.
71473108) and the Jiangsu Province Graduate Scientific Research Innovation Project (China)
(KYCX17_1783 and KYZZ16_0336).

APPENDIX: THE MAIN INFORMATION OF CHINA’S PV LISTED COMPANIES

TABLE IV. The main information about the 79 China’s PV listed companies, including stock code, name, main business,
location of industrial chain, market capitalization and province. Source: Sina Finance, Yahoo Finance, Baidu, Companies’
annual Reports, and Interviews.

Industrial Market cap

ID Code Company name Main business chain (2017.9.20) Province

1 000012 CSG Holding Silicon materials and PV Up and Mid 20.6 B CNY Guangdong
modules
2 000049 Shenzhen Desay Battery Various batteries and accessory Mid 10.66 B CNY Guangdong
Technology equipment
3 000055 China Fangda Group Solar photovoltaic curtain wall Down 9.26 B CNY Guangdong
4 000400 XJ Electric Power grid dispatching automa- Down 17.49 B CNY Henan
tion equipment
045904-21 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

TABLE IV. (Continued.)

Industrial Market cap

ID Code Company name Main business chain (2017.9.20) Province

5 000413 Dongxu Optoelectronic Photovoltaic module and power Mid and down 54.39 B CNY Hebei
station project
6 000418 Wuxi Little Swan Company Solar power generation equipment Down 28.10 B CNY Jiangsu
and distributed generation system
7 000533 Guangdong Macro Solar power module and power Mid and down 7.27 B CNY Guangdong
generation system
8 000635 Ningxia Yinglite Chemicals Monocrystal silicon, and polysili- Up 5.69 B CNY Ningxia
con production and development
9 000698 Shenyang Chemical Industry Photovoltaic power project Down 5.61 B CNY Liaoning
10 000727 Huadong Electronics Solar series products Down 13 B CNY Jiangsu
11 000786 Beijing New Building Energy conservation and envi- Down 28.56 B CNY Beijing
Material Public Limited ronmental protection building
Company materials
12 000862 Ning Xia Yin Xing Energy Solar generation equipment Down 5.58 B CNY Ningxia
13 000899 Jiangxi Ganneng Amorphous silicon photoelectric Mid 7.23 B CNY Jiangxi
film battery
14 000959 Beijing Shougang Distributed solar PV projects Down 37.4 B CNY Beijing
15 000962 Ningxia Orient Tantalum Crystalline silicon and amor- Up 4.99 B CNY Ningxia
Industry phous silicon
16 000969 Advanced Technology and Thin-film solar cells, photovol- Down 11.58 B CNY Beijing
Materials taic inverters, and controllers
17 002006 Zhejiang Jinggong Science Special equipment for solar Down 3.6 B CNY Zhejiang
and Technology
18 002008 Han’s Laser Technology Lithium ion battery, PV automa- Down 43.32 B CNY Guangdong
tion core equipment, and group
line application
19 002011 Zhejiang Dun’an Artificial Photovoltaic power station Down 10.36 B CNY Zhejiang
Environment operation
20 002035 Zhongshan Vatti Gas Solar lamp and solar water heater Down 14.71 B CNY Guangdong
Appliance Stock
21 002056 Hengdian Group DMEGC Solar cells, crystalline silicon Up and mid 20.02 B CNY Zhejiang
Magnetics wafers, and battery components
22 002077 Jiangsu Dagang Silicon wafer and silicon rod Up 6.78 B CNY Jiangsu
23 002083 Sunvim Group Solar photovoltaic cells and other Mid 6.78 B CNY Shandong
solar photovoltaic products
24 002121 Shenzhen Clou Electronics Smart grid and new energy Down 14.74 B CNY Guangdong
applications
25 002132 Henan Hengxing Science and Monocrystalline silicon, poly- Up and mid 7.24 B CNY Henan
Technology crystalline ingots, sliced, and bat-
tery components
26 002133 Cosmos Group Photovoltaic glass and concen- Down 4.59 B CNY Guangdong
trated solar glass
27 002163 Aviation Sanxin Building integrated photovoltaic Down 6.53 B CNY Guangdong
28 600089 Tebian Electric Apparatus Solar PV products and system Down 38.19 B CNY Xinjiang
Stock integration
29 600095 Harbin High-Tech (Group) Thin-film solar cells and Mid 3.06 B CNY Heilongjiang
components
30 600123 Shanxi Lanhua Sci-Tech Photovoltaic panels and inverters Down 11.02 B CNY Shanxi
Venture
31 600131 Sichuan Minjiang Photovoltaic panels, inverters, Down 4.23 B CNY Sichuan
Hydropower and solar films
32 600135 Lucky Film Solar cell backplane, polyolefin Mid 6.02 B CNY Hebei
film, conductive paste, etc.
045904-22 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

TABLE IV. (Continued.)

Industrial Market cap

ID Code Company name Main business chain (2017.9.20) Province

33 600151 Shanghai Aerospace Polycrystalline silicon, solar Up, mid, and 11.34 B CNY Shanghai
Automobile cells, battery components, and down
Electromechanical photovoltaic power station sys-
tem integration
34 600152 Ningbo Veken Elite Group Lithium ion battery Down 5.35 B CNY Zhejiang
35 600183 Shengyi Technology PV backboard, components Mid 23.04 B CNY Guangdong
36 600184 North Electro-Optic Solar cells and solar power Mid and down 10.40 B CNY Hubei
systems
37 600192 Lanzhou Great Wall Solar PV grid-connected inverter Down 3.99 B CNY Gansu
Electrical system
38 600211 Tibet Rhodiola Solar product design and Down 7.53 B CNY Xizang
Pharmaceutical manufacturing
39 600220 Jiangsu Sunshine Polycrystalline silicon and solar Up 6.53 B CNY Jiangsu
silicon wafers
40 600268 Guodian Nanjing Automation Photovoltaic power generation Down 4.17 B CNY Jiangsu
Company engineering
41 600293 Hubei Sanxia New Building Solar thermal water project Down 11.96 B CNY Hubei
Materials
42 600295 Inner Mongolia Eerduosi Solar equipment production, Down 16.8 B CNY Inner
Resources installation, and sales Mongolia
43 600299 Blue Star New Chemical Photovoltaic module Mid 32.34 B CNY Beijing
Materials
44 600336 Aucma Company Limited Solar water heaters and solar Down 4.79 B CNY Shandong
lighting
45 600372 China AVIC Electronics Photovoltaic inverter, etc. Down 29.29 B CNY Beijing
46 600397 Anyuan Coal Industry Group New energy automobile Down 4.67 B CNY Jiangxi
47 600406 NARI Technology Company Large water-light complementary Down 39.18 B CNY Jiangsu
project
48 600409 Tangshan Sanyou Chemical Organic silicon Up 25.19 B CNY Hebei
Industries
49 600438 Tongwei Polycrystalline silicon, solar Up, mid, and 36.65 B CNY Sichuan
cells, and photovoltaic power sta- down
tion construction
50 600475 Wuxi Huaguang Boiler Photovoltaic inverter, panel, Down 10.49 B CNY Jiangsu
stents, etc.
51 600482 China Power Distributed generation solar Down 44.33 B CNY Hebei
project
52 600517 Shanghai Zhixin Electric Transformer research, produc- Down 9.86 B CNY Shanghai
tion, and sales
53 600537 Eging PV Technology Crystal silicon, solar cells, and Up and mid 6.28 B CNY Jiangsu
battery components
54 600550 Baoding Tianwei Baobian Transformer and reactor Down 14.07 B CNY Hebei
Electric
55 600552 Kaisheng Technology Solar energy power station and Down 6.77 B CNY Anhui
PV glass
56 600586 Shandong Jinjing Science Solar cell module Mid 7.7 B CNY Shandong
and Technology Stock
57 600596 Zhejiang Xinan Chemical New energy development and sil- Up 8.87 B CNY Zhejiang
Industrial Group icon new material
58 600629 East China Construction New energy building projects Down 8.65 B CNY Shanghai
Group
59 600642 Shenergy Company Grid-connected PV power Down 27.68 B CNY Shanghai
generation
045904-23 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

TABLE IV. (Continued.)

Industrial Market cap

ID Code Company name Main business chain (2017.9.20) Province

60 600644 Leshan Electric Power Power development and Down 4.11 B CNY Sichuan
operation
61 600661 Shanghai Xin Nanyang Solar silicon material and photo- Up and mid 6.41 B CNY Shanghai
voltaic cell components
62 600674 Sichuan Chuantou Energy Polycrystalline silicon Up 42.3 B CNY Sichuan
63 600703 Sanan Optoelectronics Compound solar cells Mid 88.79 B CNY Guangdong
64 600715 Investment Holding Photovoltaic power generation Down 41.68 B CNY Liaoning
projects
65 600770 Jiangsu Zongyi Solar cells and components and Mid and down 11.31 B CNY Jiangsu
applications
66 600795 GD Power Development Solar photovoltaic power station Down 66.03 B CNY Liaoning
67 600796 Zhejiang Qianjiang New energy vehicle power Down 2.71 B CNY Zhejiang
Biochemical system
68 600803 ENN Ecological Holdings Solar power generation and Down 13.45 B CNY Hebei
transmission
69 600819 Shanghai Yaohua Pilkington Solar cell component glass Mid 6.40 B CNY Shanghai
Glass Group
70 600884 Ningbo Shanshan Lithium battery and battery sys- Down 26.61 B CNY Zhejiang
tem integration
71 600885 HONGFA Technology Solar system applications Down 21.37 B CNY Hubei
72 600893 Aircraft Power Corporation PV grid-connected inverter and Down 61.37 B CNY Shaanxi
solar engine controller
73 CSUN China Sunergy Polycrystalline silicon and solar Up and mid 0.81 B CNY Jiangsu
module
74 HQCL Hanwha Solarone Crystal silicon, ingots, wafers, Up, mid, and 0.64 B USD Jiangsu
solar cells, modules, and project down
development
75 JASO JA Solar Holdings Silicon chip, battery, compo- Up, mid, and 0.38 B USD Hebei
nents, and power station business down
76 LDKYQ LDK Solar Silicon material, silicon wafer, Up, mid, and 3.51 B USD Jiangxi
component, and power plant down (2013)
engineering
77 STP Suntech Power Holdings Crystal silicon, solar cells, com- Up, mid, down 2.64 B USD Jiangsu
ponents, PV systems engineering, (2012)
and PV application products
78 TSL Trina Solar Silicon material, PV modules, Up, mid, and 1.08 B USD Jiangsu
system solutions, and services down
79 YGE Yingli Green Energy Holding Silicon material, batteries, com- Up, mid, and 1.76 B USD Hebei
ponents, and system integration down

1
C. G. Gilmore, B. M. Lucey, and M. Boscia, “An ever-closer union? Examining the evolution of linkages of European
equity markets via minimum spanning trees,” Phys. A 387, 6319–6329 (2008).
2
M. Eryigit and R. Eryigit, “Network structure of cross-correlations among the world market indices,” Phys. A 388, 3
551–3562 (2009).
3
R. B. Roy and U. K. Sarkar, “Identifying influential stock indices from global stock markets: A social network analysis
approach,” Proced. Comput. Sci. 5, 442–449 (2011).
4
W. S. Jung, S. Chae, J. S. Yang, and H. T. Moon, “Characteristics of the Korean stock market correlations,” Phys. A 361,
263–271 (2006).
5
I. Henriques and P. Sadorsky, “Oil prices and the stock prices of alternative energy companies,” Energy Econ. 30,
998–1010 (2008).
6
S. Kumar, S. Managi, and A. Matsuda, “Stock prices of clean energy firms, oil and carbon markets: A vector autoregres-
sive analysis,” Energy Econ. 34, 215–226 (2012).
7
P. Sadorsky, “Correlations and volatility spillovers between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology
companies,” Energy Econ. 34, 248–255 (2012).
 045904-24 Li et al. J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 10, 045904 (2018)

8
S. Managi and T. Okimoto, “Does the price of oil interact with clean energy prices in the stock market?,” Jpn. World
Econ. 27, 1–9 (2013).
9
M. Kazemilari, A. Mardani, D. Streimikiene, and E. K. Zavadskas, “An overview of renewable energy companies in
stock exchange: Evidence from minimal spanning tree approach,” Renewable Energy 102, 107–117 (2017).
10
M. Sun, P. P. Zhang, J. W. Ji, and B. C. Ampimah, “Study on the mutual influence between enterprises: A complex net-
work perspective of China’s PV enterprises,” J. Renewable Sustainable Energy 8(6), 063502 (2016).
11
C. Granger, “Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods,” Econometrica 37,
424–438 (1969).
12
B. Gourevitch, R. Le Bouquin-Jeannès, and G. Faucon, “Linear and nonlinear causality between signals: Methods, exam-
ples and neurophysiological applications,” Biol. Cybern. 95(4), 349–369 (2006).
13
K. Friston, “Causal modelling and brain connectivity in functional magnetic resonance imaging,” PLoS Biol. 7(2),
220–225 (2009).
14
I. I. Mokhov, D. A. Smirnov, P. I. Nakonechny, S. S. Kozlenko, E. P. Seleznev, and J. Kurths, “Alternating mutual influ-
ence of El Nino/Southern Oscillation and Indian monsoon,” Geophys. Res. Lett. 38(8), L00F04, https://doi.org/10.1029/
2010GL045932 (2011).
15
S. X. Guo, A. K. Seth, K. M. Kendrick, C. Zhou, and J. F. Feng, “Partial Granger causality—Eliminating exogenous
inputs and latent variables,” J. Neurosci. Methods 172, 79–93 (2008).
16
B. Roelstraete and Y. Rosseel, “Does partial Granger causality really eliminate the influence of exogenous inputs and
latent variables?,” J. Neurosci. Methods 206(1), 73–77 (2012).
17
R. Krishna, S. Nanda, A. Kulkarni, and S. Patil, “A partial Granger causality based method for analysis of parameter
interactions in bioreactors,” Comput. Chem. Eng. 35(1), 121–126 (2011).
18
R. Krishna and S. Guo, “A partial granger causality approach to explore causal networks derived from multi-parameter
data,” Comput. Methods Syst. Biol. 5307, 9–27 (2008).
19
C. Z. Yao, Q. W. Lin, and J. N. Lin, “A study of industrial electricity consumption based on partial Granger causality
network,” Phys. A. 461, 629–646 (2016).
20
B. Efron, “Bootstrap methods: Another look at the jackknife,” Ann. Stat. 7, 1–26 (1979).
21
C. Krajewski and A. W. Dickerman, “Bootstrap analysis of phylogenetic trees derived from DNA hybridization dis-
tances,” Syst. Biol. 39(4), 383–390 (1990).
22
A. C. Davison and D. V. Hinkley, Bootstrap Methods and Their Application[M] (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1997).
23
S. Takemoto, K. Yamaoka, M. Nishikawa, Y. Yano, and Y. Takakura, “Bootstrap method-based estimation of the mini-
mum sample number for obtaining pharmacokinetic parameters in preclinical experiments,” J. Pharm. Sci. 99(4),
2176–2184 (2010).
24
D. Ciuiu, M. B~adileanu, and L. I. Georgescu, “Granger causality test and chow breakpoint test on the Romanian day
ahead electricity market,” Proc. Econ. Finance 22, 601–609 (2015).
25
H. Akaike, “Fitting autoregressive models for regression,” Ann. Inst. Stat. Math. 21, 243–247 (1969).
26
W. D. Chen, H. Xu, and Q. Guo, “Dynamic analysis on the topological properties of the complex network of international
oil prices,” Acta Phys. Sin. 59(7), 4514–4523 (2010).
27
H. Z. An, X. Y. Gao, W. Fang, X. Huang, and Y. H. Ding, “The role of fluctuating modes of autocorrelation in crude oil
prices,” Phys. A 393, 382–390 (2014).
28
X. F. Wang, X. Li, and G. Chen, The Theory and Application of Complex Network (Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
2006).
29
D. H. Wei, “An optimized Floyd algorithm for the shortest path problem,” J. Networks. 5(12), 1496–1504 (2010).

View publication stats