Since October 2016, a 75,000 m² parabolic trough collector field for district heat seems to have been operating in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in China. Ruicheng Zheng from the China Academy of Building Research and Hongzhi Cheng said that they had heard about the system, but that all the information on it was only available online. On 28 December 2017, a news article appeared on sohu.com, one of China’s largest online media companies, stating that the system supplied a shopping centre and a development project known as ZhongCheng International City in the village of HongQing De, near Baotou. The journalist who interviewed the owners of the residential buildings and the shopping centre found customers satisfied with the solar space heating that the system provides.
In an interview with sohu.com, Zhang Bo Tao, Deputy General Manager of the solar-heated shopping centre ZhongCheng Outlets Real Estate, said in December 2017: “This has already been the second heating season. The heating system has been reliable and works well. It can maintain an average temperature of around 20 °C in the shopping centre and one of around 25 °C in the residential buildings.”