Xiao Si weaves a trillion-yuan industry chain

By Reporter Shi Ziqiang

In “China’s Wire Mesh Town,” Anping County in Hebei Province, tens of thousands of wire mesh industrial and trading enterprises are running at full capacity, sketching out an industrial blueprint with an annual output value exceeding 40k yuan.

Entering the workshop of Hebei Sichujin Metal Products Co., Ltd., a stainless-steel printing mesh with a specification of 480 mesh—so thin it is like a cicada’s wing—takes shape slowly on an intelligent weaving machine, gleaming with a silvery-white luster.

This is the first major result of Hebei Province’s inaugural “crowdfunding for research” project—an ultra-high-mesh-count, high-precision stainless-steel printing mesh used in the manufacturing of high-end photovoltaic cells, which has finally achieved localization.

Time goes back two years. China’s photovoltaic industry was booming, but an unassuming key material was still being severely constrained—high-end metal mesh used for electrode printing on solar panels.

“Such mesh not only has to have a sufficiently high mesh count, but also must be precise and uniform, which places extremely high demands on weaving technology; otherwise, it will affect the efficiency and performance of the cells.” Liu Yanhui, general manager of Sichujin, said that due to high technical barriers, global demand has long been dominated by a few overseas enterprises, with prices remaining expensive and supplies tight.

Although there are many wire mesh enterprises in Anping County, they are concentrated in the traditional mid- to low-end product segments. Some enterprises have fallen into homogenous competition and price wars. When it comes to innovation, many local wire mesh companies “don’t want to invest, don’t dare to break new ground, and also don’t know how to do research,” because R&D investment is huge, the technical chain is complex, and the risk of failure is high.

“Take this high-mesh-count, high-precision stainless-steel printing mesh, for example. To overcome the hurdle of the 480-mesh specification, it’s difficult for a single company to organize end-to-end R&D and production.” This is not only Liu Yanhui’s dilemma, but also a common predicament faced across Anping’s wire mesh industry when upgrading and pursuing technological innovation.

The turning point came at the end of 2024. Anping County took on Hebei Province’s first “crowdfunding for research” project—the manufacturing technology for high-mesh-count mesh for photovoltaic cell screen-printing—and explored a new R&D mechanism characterized by co-investment, co-research, co-bearing of responsibilities, and sharing benefits.

“Turn ‘solo fighting’ into ‘group combat,’ so enterprises no longer have to face innovation risks alone.” Zhao Chaoying, deputy magistrate of Anping County, said.

A joint innovation consortium was quickly formed: the Hebei Provincial Institute of Industrial Technology coordinated resources and provided partial funding; Anping County integrated resources from state-owned enterprises to set up a wire mesh group as the party responsible for carrying the project and for testing; Liu Yanhui’s Sichujin Company serves as the core party for R&D and production; and a photovoltaic equipment enterprise from Kunshan City, Jiangsu—Kunshan Liangpin Screen Printing Materials Co., Ltd.—acts as the key downstream application verification party.

The four parties jointly invested 2 million yuan in R&D funds according to the agreed proportions, and clarified the division of responsibilities and rights as well as the mechanism for allocating interests: if the breakthrough succeeds, the results are owned by the corporate parties and then scaled up for mass production, while the research institute and the group withdraw their funds and reinvest in new projects; if it fails, the risks will be shared.

The target to be achieved is extremely demanding: by using 11-micron stainless-steel wires of a very fine diameter, weaving 480 mesh openings within a length of one inch (25.4 millimeters), controlling the thickness error across the entire mesh surface to within 0.5 micron, and requiring that the uniformity error of the mesh opening size must be less than 3%. Any minor vibration, temperature change, or even the cleanliness of the air could cause the delicate metal wires to break during the weaving process.

In the months that followed, the workshop became the main battlefield. Liu Yanhui and the technical team immersed themselves in the workshop, repeatedly改for and tested the equipment—pulling, annealing, weaving—conducting massive trials of process parameters at every step. The laptop was covered with dense notes, recording the reasons behind each adjustment and each failure.

Finally, in March 2025, when the mesh rolls from the 138th trial production were taken off the machine, after rigorous testing, all data met the requirements!

The benefits of success were immediate. The cost of the localized 480-mesh high-precision printing mesh fell from over 40k yuan per square meter to around 30k yuan, strongly supporting downstream photovoltaic companies in reducing costs and improving efficiency. The output value of Sichujin also rose from 20 million yuan in 2024 to 80 million yuan in 2025.

The successful outcome of the first “crowdfunding for research” project injected new vitality into Anping County’s industrial upgrading. Today, projects such as the R&D of automatic metal-wire mesh threading equipment in Anping County and the development of fully automatic intelligent fence-welding systems have been shortlisted for Hebei Province’s second batch of “crowdfunding for research” projects.

From a technical island that a single enterprise could not break through on its own, to an innovation ecosystem activated by a set of mechanisms—this roll of metal mesh as thin as a cicada’s wing weaves not only new materials for China’s high-end manufacturing, but also a new path for solving the challenges of industrial upgrading through innovation in mechanisms.

People’s Daily (04/08/2026, Edition 10)