Small Nation, Big Dream: Cape Verde's Ambassador Salutes China's Support

Cape Verde has been this World Cup's biggest surprise. The tiny African island nation made its tournament debut and stormed into the knockout stage, spinning fairy tale after fairy tale along the way. Argentina, the defending champion, finally stopped the run with a 2-3 win in the round of 32, but Cape Verde's fighting spirit and dazzling play had already won over fans worldwide.

Cape Verde is this World Cup's biggest surprise.

Cape Verde's ambassador to China, Arlindo Do Rosario, says the story doesn't end on the pitch. Speaking to The Paper in Beijing on July 4, he credited China's years of selfless assistance for helping the national team shine on the world stage.

Tiny nation, big heart: 4,033 square kilometers, under 600,000 people, the size of a Chinese county.

Size tells only part of Cape Verde's story. The country covers just 4,033 square kilometers and holds fewer than 600,000 people, roughly the population of a single Chinese county. It gained independence only in 1975, and its climb from poverty in football and in society more broadly echoes China's own development path.

Cape Verde has no big budget, no long football history, and no elite youth academy system. What it has built instead is half a century of steady, patient progress, laying infrastructure and nurturing talent one step at a time.

Cape Verde's Ambassador to China, Arlindo Do Rosario.

Every training session and every decisive World Cup qualifier ran through one venue: the China-built Praia National Stadium. Handed over in 2013, it gave Cape Verde its first international-standard sporting facility since independence, closing a long-standing gap in proper competition venues. Eleven Chinese staff members still work there today. Then-Prime Minister José Maria Neves once called the stadium "a dream China helped us realize" and named it one of the largest projects since Cape Verde's independence.

Do Rosario still can't hide his excitement over the team's run. He thanked Beijing residents for the attention and praise they showered on Cape Verde, and pointed to a friendship that has only deepened over half a century. "Football has this power. It can bring people's hearts together, making the already deep friendship between our two peoples even stronger," he said. He recalled Cape Verde's opening match against heavily favored Spain as proof of that conviction: "Cape Verde may be a small team, but we have a strong heart!"

Cape Verde's opening-match heroics set Chinese social media alight. Congratulations and praise flooded mainland platforms, and Do Rosario says the goodwill genuinely moved him. He stressed that Cape Verde's sporting progress owes much to Chinese support. "Since the stadium was built, we've been able to host more international competitions, and every Cape Verdean takes pride in that," he said. China has also helped Cape Verde upgrade its education system and build school sports infrastructure, laying a solid foundation for the country's sporting development.

China's footprint in Cape Verde goes well beyond the stadium. Do Rosario listed a string of China-assisted projects: the National Assembly Building, government offices, the Poilão Dam, the new campus of the University of Cape Verde, the Safe City program, social housing projects, and the maternity wing of Baptista de Sousa Hospital, handed over just last year. These traces of China woven into everyday life give Cape Verde's World Cup journey a natural sense of familiarity for Chinese audiences.

The Chinese connection even runs through Cape Verde's match gear. Goalkeeper Vozinha, whose spectacular saves proved instrumental to Cape Verde's success, wore boots made by a footwear factory in Putian, Fujian. Cape Verde player Willy Semedo signed with Li-Ning on the very day the World Cup kicked off, turning him into a showcase for Chinese sportswear brands on the global stage.

The World Cup run is over. The name "Cape Verde", first timer of the global event, stays.

The World Cup run is over. The name "Cape Verde", first timer of the global event, stays.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Cape Verde. The Cape Verdean Football Federation has announced a friendly match against the Chinese men's national team once the World Cup concludes. Paulo Santos, the federation's vice president, put it plainly: "Local Chinese businesspeople supply most of our national team jerseys. They are our friends, our brothers."

Do Rosario has lived in China for four years now. Asked to sum up Beijing in one word, he chose "attractive." He found the ancient capital warm, beautiful, and inclusive from the moment he arrived, and its safe, convenient living environment helped him and his family settle in quickly. "The pace of life here is quite fast, yet everything runs in an orderly, secure way," he said. "There's also an extensive transport network, excellent international schools, efficient healthcare services, and plenty of leisure options. My family and I are very happy living here!"

Cape Verde's magical World Cup run may be over, but its debut appearance has already etched the country's name into the world's memory. Football gave this small island nation the power to show the world its dreams, and its dignity.

Mao Paishou

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

When the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, energy costs in Germany, a country heavily reliant on Russian natural gas, spun instantly out of control. Electricity prices at one point surged sevenfold, forcing ordinary people to dream up all manner of clever tricks to save on their power bills. One of those tricks has become a distinctive sight on German streets: the "balcony solar" system.

To cut power bills, Germans turned balconies into power plants.

"Balkonkraftwerk": Miracles On Balconies

This simple generating setup costs just a few hundred euros, yet more than 1.33 million units have been installed across Germany in three years. The German government has even amended the law, granting tenants with no rooftop of their own priority installation rights.

What Germans call the "Balkonkraftwerk", or "balcony power plant", is actually just one or two solar panels hung outside the railing, an inverter the size of a shoebox, and a plug that goes into a household socket. The current then flows back into the home: the inverter sets its output voltage slightly higher than the 230V household supply, so solar power feeds in reverse into the wiring. A small storage battery can be added to keep the power coming at night.

The "Balkonkraftwerk": railing-hung panels, a shoebox-sized inverter, one plug.

The principle is not complicated. It works rather like a water supply system. Pipes maintain a steady pressure; turn on the tap and the pressure difference pushes the water out. The grid works the same way. China's standard household voltage is 220V and Germany's is 230V. The inverter in a balcony photovoltaic module simply nudges its output voltage slightly above the socket voltage, pushing solar power back in.

Once the current enters the socket, it is consumed on the spot, "drunk up" by the appliances at home. Less electricity is drawn from the grid, and the meter turns more slowly. If no appliances are running, then in areas where bidirectional metering is permitted, the surplus power flows out of the home along the mains line and back into the grid.

A Few Hundred Euros, Real Money Back

A "balcony power plant" sells for roughly 200 to 500 euros, depending on output. The best-selling 800W model goes for about 350 euros. A solar-plus-storage package with a battery costs between 800 and 1,500 euros.

A granny who lives in Stuttgart finds a 300W system enough to cover her basic needs: lighting, the router and electric fans. She now checks the next day's sunshine forecast every evening. If the sun will be out, she schedules a bike charge or runs the dishwasher. "Save whatever you can," she says.

Granny's 300W system covers her lights, router and fans.

Her nightly ritual: the sunshine forecast. "Save whatever you can."

Weyland, a young man in the northern city of Kiel, hung two panels with a combined output of 600W on the balcony of his rented apartment. In good weather they cover half of his daily electricity use. The whole system cost under 500 euros, yet saves him more than 90 euros a year, a payback period of about five years. These days he spends his time glued to the app, watching the generation figures roll in.

Kiel renter Weyland's two balcony panels total 600W.

In southern Germany, where the sunshine is better, a standard 800W system generates about 750 to 850 kWh a year. At last year's average price of 0.39 euros per kWh, that puts up to 295 to 334 euros a year back in the user's pocket.

For an ordinary household consuming 3,000 kWh a year, saving is about  25 to 28 percent. A single-person household using around 1,500 kWh could ideally save 50 to 57 percent.

No Roof? No Problem

Europe used to put solar panels on rooftops. But more than half of Germany's population lives in rented housing, the highest share in the EU. That means no roof, no land, nowhere to put panels, and no eligibility for the complicated installation and grid-connection approval process.

No roof, no problem: balcony solar is the tenant's lifesaver.

That was when Chinese manufacturers stepped up, Anker Innovations, EcoFlow and Zendure among them. They launched lightweight, low-cost balcony solar kits that skip the tedious paperwork and are far easier to use.

Panels have been slimmed down from the traditional 20kg to just 3 to 5kg. Hook-style railing clamps fix them in place with a few screws. Some models can simply be lashed on with metal cable ties, and they can be taken down easily when moving.

Voltage has dropped from the 600V to 1,000V high-voltage direct current of rooftop solar to a safe 30V to 60V. The plug goes straight into an ordinary socket, and monitoring is done entirely through an app. Installation and use are virtually "zero-threshold". German young people love it. Chinese manufacturers have turned solar "engineering" into a consumer electronics product for everyone.

Berlin Gives the Green Light

The German government has also given the green light. A legislative amendment in May 2024 allows self-installation without prior approval; simple registration afterwards is enough. Balcony solar is now a "privileged installation", on par with disabled-access facilities and EV charging points. Landlords and owners' committees may not block installations on grounds such as "spoiling the view". A landlord who wants to refuse must prove a safety hazard; if the tenant can fix the hazard, the installation goes ahead anyway. The government also waived the 19 percent VAT, and cities including Berlin and Stuttgart have rolled out dedicated subsidies of up to 500 euros. All income from generation is exempt from personal income tax.

With the government "loosening the reins", balcony solar has grown rapidly. Around 260,000 units were added in 2023. The figure soared to 435,000 in 2024, and another 430,000 or so were registered in 2025. That is 1.1 million units installed at lightning speed in three years. By May this year, cumulative installations had reached 1.33 million, the equivalent of more than a thousand German households signing up every day.

Policy green light: install first, register afterwards.

Other European countries have followed suit. The Netherlands had reached 600,000 cumulative installations by the end of 2025, the highest penetration after Germany, with nearly 5 percent of households equipped. Austria has installed 250,000 units, Italy 200,000 and Belgium 150,000.

Made in China, Invisible at Home

Of the solar panels imported into Europe, 98 percent come from China, and 70 percent of micro-inverters are Chinese-supplied. In balcony energy storage, Chinese companies had already secured the first seven places of the top ten best-seller spots in Europe as early as the third quarter of 2024. Industry forecasts see global installed balcony solar capacity exceeding 50 gigawatts by 2030, with China likely to claim more than 40 percent of it.

Yet in China itself, these products are practically invisible in cities. For one thing, electricity in China is genuinely cheap. For another, China follows a "centralized plus distributed" path.

The northwest builds gigawatt-scale centralized solar bases across deserts and the Gobi on a massive scale, using ultra-high-voltage transmission to solve the geographic mismatch. The east develops distributed solar on factory and detached-house rooftops. Rural rooftops easily run to tens or even hundreds of square meters, accommodating 20kW to 50kW systems. That is dozens of times the generating capacity of balcony solar.

With no domestic demand to speak of, Chinese companies have nonetheless struck overseas demand with pinpoint precision and taken command of the global balcony solar market. The same story has played out with saddle-style window air conditioners, fully automatic lawnmowers, electric-assist bicycles and AI game-tracking cameras. To Western politicians, China's technological rise is a threat. But to ordinary people abroad, Chinese products have made life better, time and again.