After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine disrupted Europe’s natural gas imports
, the European Union pledged to source nearly half of its energy from clean technology by the end of the decade. But as the EU pushed for energy independence, a global superpower — not European companies — was poised to reap the benefits of the new strategy.
In recent years, a number of Chinese wind companies have developed wind parks in Romania, Spain and other countries. European officials suspected those firms could offer cheaper prices thanks to Beijing’s generous state subsidies and in 2024 launched an inquiry to assess whether state aid had given them an unfair advantage.
Confidential records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show how, long before that probe, one of China’s most important financial arms had played a key role in establishing Beijing’s economic foothold in Europe. Over the last decade, the records show, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has quietly financed the expansion of Chinese wind technology across the continent.
“ICBC tops the chart of the commercial banks in providing financing to the Chinese solar and wind renewables energy market,” ICBC London officers wrote in an internal 2021 memo.
The bank’s clients included Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd., the world’s top supplier of wind turbines, which is listed on the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges and includes Chinese state entities among its largest shareholders. The company controls a relatively small share of the European market but is currently the main target of the EU investigation for obtaining grants, tax and preferential bank loans that allegedly helped it outpace its European peers. Sometimes called the “the Huawei of green energy,” a reference to the Chinese tech giant that has dwarfed its competition thanks to sustained government support, Goldwind’s global revenue topped $10 billion in 2025.
ICIJ examined dozens of internal memos and other bank records from between 2016 and 2024 and found that ICBC London approved more than $140 million in loans to help Chinese state companies acquire shares in at least 16 U.K. wind farms. The bank has also facilitated at least $450 million in financing for Chinese energy firms’ operations in Europe.
The findings are part of ICIJ’s China Capital investigation, which reveals the bank’s unique role in China’s fight for technological supremacy and national self-reliance. The investigation, in collaboration with 23 media partners, is based on 4.8 million confidential files from ICBC’s London branch and a U.K. subsidiary, referred to together as ICBC London.
ICBC’s London headquarters. Image: Scilla Alecci/ICIJ
The records provide new details on how ICBC London routinely justified deals as part of its support for the government’s top priorities: the massive infrastructure investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative and the industrial policy Made in China 2025.
ICBC London has financed the international expansion of strategic Chinese energy firms, including some accused of benefiting China’s military apparatus and stealing competitors’ industrial secrets, the records show. In Africa, South America and other regions, loans helped China get copper, lithium and other commodities needed to transform its economy while expanding its political influence in resource-rich countries. ICBC did not respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment.
In recent years, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has used new foreign subsidies regulation to crack down on unfair competition and investigate several industries dominated by China. After probing the electric vehicles sector and railroad construction firms, European officials have recently directed their attention toward wind energy.
The EU has launched an investigation into whether Chinese firms distorted the internal market by selling cheap products across the whole supply chain. European manufacturers are still the leading turbine providers in the region, but Chinese companies are expanding, according to the trade organization Global Wind Energy Council.
Experts warn that increasing dependence on China for critical energy infrastructure could make the EU vulnerable to supply chain disruption, outages and even cybersecurity risks if geopolitical tensions rise. Western governments have been on the alert since 2024 when U.S. authorities found that Chinese-state sponsored hackers known as Volt Typhoon had been lying dormant for years inside critical U.S. infrastructure in preparation for future acts of sabotage.
In the case of Goldwind, the European Commission suspects that Chinese government grants, tax breaks and “preferential financing” may have allowed the company “to offer, in certain cases, lower prices than its competitors, thereby winning more wind project tenders in the EU than it would have done in the absence of those foreign subsidies.”
Goldwind didn’t respond to ICIJ’s requests for comment. In a public statement published earlier this year, the company said that it complies with local laws.
Victor Shih, a political science professor at University of California San Diego who has researched technology financing, told ICIJ that bank loans are an important — and often overlooked — form of state subsidy because all Chinese state-owned institutions, including banks like ICBC, support Beijing’s priorities.
“The EU is worried about subsidies, and banks are a big part of the puzzle,” Shih said. “There’s fiscal subsidies, which come from the government budget, but a lot of the investment is financed by bank loans.”
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ile ICBC wants to make money by financing successful tech companies, Ko said, it may also lend to less profitable firms that fulfill Beijing’s green ambitions. “They’re trying to balance these multiple competing objectives that sometimes can contradict.”
In a confidential brief for potential lenders, Goldwind touted its insulation from market headwinds as one of its strengths: “Backed by Strong [State Owned Enterprise] background with flexibility from market competition mechanism.”
Goldwind had “strong access to funding owing to government support of low-cost financing to the renewable energy sectors,” the brief said. It also said that its subsidiaries in China benefited from tax breaks or were taxed at a preferential 15% rate because of their involvement in technology development or government-supported projects. The standard rate was 25% at the time.
The company had already received loans “at favourable rates” from five Chinese state banks worth about $11.5 billion and government grants totalling at least $135 million to support research on advanced turbine models, the brief said.
In 2018, as part of a $300 million loan with other banks, ICBC London and two other ICBC branches loaned $110 million to the wind company.
In the following years, Goldwind went on to install thousands of turbines across six continents, including in Australia, North America and Europe. In 2021, ICBC branches also financed the company’s expansion in Ukraine, the records show.
‘A new reality’
In 2024, armed with new powers to combat companies benefiting from foreign state subsidies, the European Commission requested information from several Chinese wind companies to assess whether state financial backing had given them an unfair advantage over their competitors.
Over the last decade, the growth of China’s economy and its increasing technological sophistication combined with Beijing’s shift toward authoritarianism and interventionist policies have triggered a tightening of global trade rules.
“That is a reality of this new era that we’re in,” said Thilo Hanemann, an economist and global trade expert at Rhodium Group, a research firm. Hanemann said the shift had led many governments to reconsider their approach to China to ensure “no individual Chinese investor or bank or company can get to a market position where they could dominate a specific sector area.”
There may be “some certain parts of our economy where we do not want to have either foreign investment overall or especially foreign investment from a non-allied nation,” he said.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, following their meeting in Paris, France, in May 2024. Image: Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Earlier this year, European officials singled out Goldwind in public statements. While acknowledging the company’s limited presence in Europe, the officials found “sufficient indications” that Goldwind had received foreign subsidies that “may negatively affect competition for the supply of wind turbines and related services in the EU.”
The company said in a public statement that it is cooperating with the European authorities. Beijing has urged the EU to stop the probe and has called the measures against the Chinese firms “discriminatory and restrictive.”
A European Commission spokesperson told ICIJ that the probe is ongoing but declined to elaborate. Besides Goldwind, the agency is “still looking into the rest of the market,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The wind industry now wants to “level the playing field,” according to Zipt, the WindEurope spokesperson, after Huawei and other Chinese firms upended Europe’s solar sector with cheaper inverters, the devices that turn solar panel output into grid electricity.
“We are a continent that is not very rich in resources,” Zipt said. “So for the time being, solar and wind are the two big mechanisms that we can use to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. But now the European Union is also clear that they don’t want to swap a dependency on Russian fossil fuel with a dependency on Chinese turbines.”
Contributors: Jesús Escudero (ICIJ)
Source: ICIJ · 2026-11-04
