China is leading the world in industrial robots or programmable machines that are pioneering fast and cost-effective manufacturing. China currently holds over 50% of the world market share in industrial robots capable of assembly, production line handling, service tasks, machine feeding, palletizing, packaging, and more. Automation is fueling Chinese manufacturing in every sector from automotives to electronics. The advancement of AI will soon provide China with a cutting-edge ability to usher in a new era of humanoid robots that will become a portion of the future workforce.
China installed around 290,000 new industrial robots in 2024, nearly twice as many as the European Union, the United States, and Japan combined. Around 86,000 industrial robots went onto the market across the EU last year, while Japan implemented 43,000 and the US around 34,000. The market share of industrial robots was expected to surpass 2.1 million in 2024, valued at around $9.4 billion USD.
Chinese manufacturers are bypassing rising labor costs and an aging workforce through the use of robots. Factories are scaling their operations to turn China into the world’s manufacturing base. China has the ability to produce these robots at one-third the cost of other nations as it produces 90% of the components required for AI industrial robots. However, China is heavily reliant on exports for the remaining 10% of key components. Foreign robot makers like FANUC, ABB, and Yaskawa have major production facilities in China, facilitating knowledge transfer to Chinese firms.
Will robots and AI replace human workers? They’ve already begun to do so. Some estimates believe that automation has replaced 1.7 million workers in China over the past 25 years. Around 80% to 90% of low-skilled labor that only requires simple or repetitive tasks has been assigned to robots. In auto manufacturing, for example, robots have been trained to perform 70% of assembly from welding to painting. Estimates believe that around 35.8% of China’s entire workforce will be automated by 2049, replacing 278 million Chinese workers.
These robots are advancing rapidly. They’ve proven effective in manufacturing, but with machine learning and language models, they’re beginning to seep into virtually every sector, including health care and education. The Chinese government has stated it plans to become a world leader in humanoid robots by 2027, inserting $138 billion into a state venture investment fund and providing private sector incentives for any company wishing to invest in the technology.
New robots are equipped with real-time sensor data and the ability to make decisions, collaborate with human workers, and perform multi-step advanced tasks. To train the AI robots, China has developed major human-robot hybrid training warehouses.
Focusing solely on the basic industrial robots, China has pioneered modern manufacturing. Cheap labor was once China’s stronghold over manufacturing, but now, the nation is relying more on trained technology than a human workforce. Creative destruction is happening at a rapid pace where the future workforce will be indistinguishable from what we see today.
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