China makes module efficiency a legal requirement

China stops treating module efficiency as a commercial differentiator and starts treating it as a legal requirement. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued five mandatory national standards between May and June 2026, effective from 1 January 2027.

PV Tech, in a report dated 15 September 2026 on the ministry's official Q&A, sets out the floors: 23.2% efficiency for TOPCon and HJT modules and 23.5% for back-contact, with minimum bifaciality of 75%, 85% and 70%. Enforcement covers production, sale and import.

Time is the scarce asset. A line below those floors has little more than a year to be converted or retired, and the calendar also reaches anyone importing Chinese modules. For the Brazilian buyer, it changes the list of eligible suppliers before it changes the price.

Anyone negotiating 2027 delivery gains an objective qualification test: require the efficiency class and bifaciality set by the standard, and check that the line producing the batch will comply at shipment.