Photovoltaic espionage—fire prevention, theft prevention, and prevention of actions by people from India

“Core data leaked from a certain university laboratory; the school authorities sealed the server overnight.” The laboratory made a major breakthrough in TOPCon battery technology and mastered the key parameters for reducing the defect density of the passivation layer! An Indian doctoral student who participated in the project is under major suspicion.

Similar incidents have continued in recent years. Some people have found that they specifically target weaknesses in patent protection. According to data from the China Patent Information Center, the number of abnormal patent applications in the photovoltaic field in 2024 surged by 30%, with suspicious patent applications involving Indian-backed institutions accounting for 17%.

A typical case is REC SOLARS (now controlled by India), which used patent CN105359371B, highly similar to the technology of a Chinese university laboratory, to pose a potential threat to China's component production. This patent, from structural design to material ratio, has a 92% similarity to the unpublished experimental data of a certain university;

Indian photovoltaic giant Waaree launched a 730W double-sided heterojunction component in 2024, and its technical team includes several graduates who studied materials science in China;

The photovoltaic thin-film technology released by India's Tata Group has a similarity of up to 92% in its core deposition process to a patent applied for by a Chinese company in 2018;

JinkoSolar sued Waaree, India's largest photovoltaic company, in the United States in 2025, accusing it of infringing on the core N-type TOPCon patent (similarity exceeding 90%).

Data from 2024 shows that the number of Indian students in China exceeds 30,000, with 65% studying electrical automation, photovoltaic technology, and biopharmaceuticals—science and engineering majors. They have mostly entered top laboratories in 985 universities. In Tsinghua University's photovoltaic laboratory, Indian students account for almost half! Photovoltaics, ultra-high voltage, and new energy batteries are our leading global expertise, and they are now becoming popular majors for Indian students. Furthermore, 80% of Indian students graduating from China enter high-tech companies upon returning to their home country.

Faced with this situation, we are not unaware. The Ministry of Education as early as 2015 listed underwater acoustic engineering and quantum communication as "prohibited fields for foreign students." All projects involving the "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted for Export from China" implement an "Indian student avoidance system." In Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, the photovoltaic laboratory adopts a "two-person accompaniment system," and all data access requires traceable records; Professor Zhang Mingyu of Beijing Foreign Studies University even proposed to reduce the annual quota of Indian students to 2,000 and restrict their choice of majors.

However, current management still has loopholes. A Nanjing University survey shows that 37% of the students involved were operated through third-party agencies!

In 2024, a certain university awarded more than 500 scholarships to Indian students, covering not only tuition fees but also living expenses, with an average of 100,000 RMB per person per year!

A netizen posted a comparison: international students live in double rooms with air conditioning and water heaters, while local students can only squeeze into six-person rooms, making it difficult to sleep comfortably in the summer. This "super-national treatment" difference has caused controversy online, with many people feeling it is unfair.

Considering India's poor reputation internationally, fire prevention, theft prevention, and prevention of actions by people from India are necessary!