The rain and gloomy skies during the SNEC PV Conference – the biggest in China’s solar-panel manufacturing industry – summed up the mood in the market, whose major players congregated in Shanghai earlier this month for the four-day annual event. The scale was noticeably smaller this year. Several leading companies opted out for a variety of reasons, including tight budgets. More tellingly, CEOs from major producers Longi Green Technology and Tongwei – keynote speakers last year – gave it a...