Yingli chief executive Liansheng Miao says the company is looking for ways to take advantage of the Chinese government’s recently announced ‘Golden Sun’ solar subsidy, which has drawn mixed reviews from analysts.

The Baoding-based Yingli Green first agreed to form a joint venture with the Hainan Provincial Development to build a series of factories that will make polysilicon ingots, wafers, cells and modules, with an annual capacity of 100 megawatts (MW).

Yingli will hold an 80% stake in the enterprise, to be called Hainan Yingli New Energy Resources.

Next, the company will form a joint venture with Hainan Provincial Water Conservancy & Power Group to develop and operate on-grid solar projects totalling 300MW around Hainan Province by 2011. Yingli will hold a 20% stake in the venture, to be called Hainan Green Islands.

Chief executive Liansheng Miao says: “Following the launch of China’s PV incentive policies, including the Ministry of Finance’s announcement of the Golden Sun programme ... we expect there will be many additional near-term opportunities in the China market.”

Hainan, an island off the southern coast of China that is slightly larger than Belgium, is the country’s smallest province, but its largest Special Economic Zone.

Maio says Hainan is ripe for solar investment, being “rich in solar resources and benefiting from strong local government support”.

Earliest this week Yingli Green announced it was opening US offices in New York and San Francisco.

The company’s North American managing director recently commented that the market for solar products in the US has improved dramatically in the last six weeks thanks to new government support for green-energy projects and developers looking to take advantage of the depressed price of solar modules.