Inside Yingli, the Giant Chinese Solar Company Sponsoring the World Cup

You’ve seen its logos on the sidelines. Now get a peek inside the company trying to transform the world.


It takes about two hours by car from the Chinese capital Beijing to get to the smog-blanketed city of Baoding. I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s nothing much to speak of, typical of the Northeast’s expanse of industrial wastelands, threaded together by super-highways.

So we were surprised to find that Baoding—where air pollution registers at hazardous levels for more than a quarter of the year—was also home to the sprawling campus of the world’s top solar panel manufacturer, Yingli. We had landed, it seemed, in the very epicenter of China’s clean tech revolution. After weeks of negotiations, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I were finally granted access to film this exclusive footage at Yingli’s headquarters in the fall of 2013. What awaited inside blew our socks off: acres of high-tech solar wizardry attended to by an impressive fleet of skilled workers, and an understandably boastful management.

In the video above, we take you behind-the-scenes of Yingli, and put a face to the name you’ve been seeing in the background of World Cup games: In 2010, Yingli became the first renewable energy company, and the first Chinese company, to partner with the tournament.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate