Humanoid robots made in China took centre stage during mid-February’s Spring Festival Gala – the national New Year’s evening broadcast and one of the world’s most-watched television shows. During the show, the robots lunged, twirled and backflipped through an extensive Kung Fu routine, appeared alongside actors in a comedy skit, and performed a choreographed dance with human partners. They didn’t miss a beat.

The primetime spectacle involving robots from four different manufacturers was undoubtedly curated to a high degree but served its purpose – promoting China’s advanced robotics ecosystem to a domestic audience and the world. And while humanoid robots remain a work in progress, their thrilling performances at the gala underlined the significant gains in Chinese robotics in recent years—particularly since the pandemic, as autonomous machines become an increasingly common sight in malls, hotels and hospitals.

With robotics on the cusp of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, China has emerged as a significant player. The interest in the Chinese robotics ecosystem is understandable as it combines several areas where the country is excelling, from AI and hardware supply chains and advanced manufacturing, into a prominent sector that is catching attention and increasingly employed to underline China’s broader technological ambitions.

The Chinese robotics industry is at the forefront of defining automation and human-robot collaboration. With multibillion-dollar domestic startups and international corporations setting up research and development hubs focused on AI and robotics, China is not just keeping pace with global trends but increasingly setting them. This unique combination of scientific excellence, entrepreneurship and investor confidence means the country is shaping the next era of automation and intelligent machines, robots and drones.

“We must acknowledge that dimensions in China are just by a multitude larger,” says Georg Stieler, managing director for Asia at STM, an international consultancy specializing in B2B market research and strategic management for companies in the engineering industry.

As China positions itself as a leader in next-generation robotics, there are considerable opportunities for existing global powerhouses in robotics innovation such as Switzerland – a country already well-known for its excellence, creativity and leadership in the field of robotics and automation.

Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) have captured global attention thanks to their world-leading technology and affordability. But a lesser-known point of pride about China’s EV story is not the cars themselves but how they are produced – often in super-automated factories, with barely a worker in sight, where robots hum through their work in total darkness.

A case in point is the digital intelligence factory built by Changan Automobile Group two years ago in Chongqing municipality of southwest China. Leveraging AI, 5G networks and more than 2,000 robots and autonomous vehicles operating in tandem, the factory assembles a new car every 60 seconds through fully automated production lines. The high levels of digitalization and automation have helped the state-of-the-art factory cut production costs by one-fifth compared with traditional methods.

China’s embrace of robotics is reflected by the number of machines installed annually, a metric where it has outpaced the US, Germany, Japan and South Korea for years. A record high of 295,045 new industrial robots—those used in automation applications in industrial environments—were installed in China in 2024, up by 7% from a year earlier. They represent more than half of all installations for the year, meaning China alone deployed more robots than every other country on earth combined

China has been the world’s largest industrial robot market since 2013 and its total operational robot stock now surpasses 2 million units as of 2024 (equivalent to 43% of the global total) while second-placed Japan counted just 450,530 units in the same year. Chinese manufacturers notched a milestone last year when they sold more than foreign suppliers in their home market for the first time, capturing 57% market share compared with 26% a decade ago.

But the impressive market growth rate still undersells the potential level of robotization in China’s economy. Despite the massive deployment, the country ranked third in the world on robot density with 470 robots per 10,000 employees, behind South Korea’s 1,012 units and Singapore’s 770 units. The metric indicates that while China has surpassed traditionally high-automation nations like Germany and Japan, its robot installation boom still has some way to run before it catches up with frontrunners.

To this end the Chinese leadership has been clear that it wants more intelligent robots to move beyond the lab and into real life. That message ran through the National People’s Congress in Beijing in early March, where a draft outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) characterized robotics as a strategic emerging industry to be prioritized.

The outline also designated ‘embodied intelligence’ – a term for AI fused with physical technologies such as robots and drones – as one of 10 “new industries and tracks” to be developed and included within six broader growth engines for the next decade.

Robots have long been used in sectors with long track records of automation. In logistics hubs, service robots are showing up as self-driving vehicles and robotic tugs that accelerate delivery and procurement. Furthermore, in China and across the world, restaurants have introduced autonomous service robots to fetch food from kitchens to customers.

Supply chain disruptions during the pandemic opened the door to new opportunities for domestic suppliers of industrial robots, according to Stieler. “For the first time, leading domestic robot manufacturers such as ESTUN and INOVANCE were considered as eligible suppliers at car manufacturers such as BYD and in the Apple supply chain.”

“This and their capability to identify scalable niche applications early on – such as lithium-ion batteries or solar panels – helped domestic players to now occupy more than 50% of the market, up from around 30% in 2019,” said Stieler, who added that this share does not include robots manufactured by foreign players such as KUKA, ABB or Universal Robots, which have increasingly localized production within China over the last few years.

The increasing sophistication of Chinese robotics is showing up in rising exports. High-tech products were one of China’s fastest-growing export categories in 2025, and within the segment, exports of industrial robots clocked year-on-year growth of 48.7%. Industrial robot exports also exceeded imports last year, making China a net exporter of industrial robots for the first time.

Meanwhile, advancements in AI, 5G connectivity, semiconductors, batteries and sensors are accelerating progress in China’s development of humanoids and embodied intelligence. “These are emerging fields, where foreign companies don’t have a lead of several decades. We have a comparable situation to EVs, where China has shown that it can take the lead by throwing enormous resources on a new industry,” said Stieler.

Vision Language Action (VLA) models – the brains behind embodied intelligence – are not yet reliable enough to facilitate economically viable applications at this point, according to Stieler. But Chinese tech giants have taken note of the progress made and are looking to robotics as a new market for AI applications. Online search giant Baidu, for instance, has partnered with Shenzhen-based UBTech Robotics to integrate its Large Language Model (LLM) Ernie Bot into UBTech’s Walker S humanoid.

The myriad applications for humanoids suggest they harbor the most potential. Aging populations, labor shortages and low productivity gains in service sectors all support the use case for robots, and adopting human form offers the added benefit of adaptability into everyday life.

Early types of humanoids are already working in manufacturing and warehouses, but currently the majority are general models built for R&D and training. A fully autonomous humanoid robot could one day be versatile enough to enter factories and homes to perform nearly any kind of physical task done by humans today, including the so-called ‘4D’ jobs that are dull, dirty, dangerous and/or delicate.

While China’s latest humanoid robots are impressive enough to feature on primetime national television, the competition to build a viable product remains wide open. Not to be outdone, US robotics startups are keen to bring innovations to market as quickly as possible. Take California-based Figure AI, backed by investors including Nvidia and Microsoft, which has livestreamed its Helix-02 humanoid robots working factory-style eight-hour shifts without intervention.

China’s robotics ambitions are aimed at addressing existential headwinds that could affect economic growth in the near to long term. Breakthroughs in robotics will offset labor shortages driven by a shrinking working-age population, as well as shifts in labor patterns such as the rise of the gig economy and growing preferences for hybrid work.

A focus on new technologies is also driving the rapid growth in robotics in China. Early growth drivers like urbanization and infrastructure investment have peaked and the government is nurturing new sectors to sustain economic growth, including high-tech industries like NEVs, solar photovoltaic panels and batteries.

As new sectors expand, manufacturing companies are increasingly adopting cost-effective robotics – mostly supplied by domestic firms – to automate production. Automation of production or services with robots ensures consistent quality, reduces errors and could boost productivity by operating round the clock. It also allows reprogramming for different tasks, quickly accommodating new products or market demands.

Automotive and electronics manufacturing remain the most important sales industries for industrial robots, followed in order by mechanicals and metal, batteries, photovoltaics, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and biochemistry, logistics and food and beverage, according to Stieler.

Collaborative robots have been the fastest-growing segment during the last two years due to their easy deployment, flexibility, small footprint and low energy consumption. China is setting new standards in this segment with applications in the production and testing of NEVs.

“We have a different situation here than five or 10 years ago: while we helped to monetize foreign application knowhow in China back then, application knowhow is now flowing toward the West. You cannot build a competitive battery factory in Europe today without Chinese knowhow,” said Stieler.

Robots comprise hardware ranging from motor joints, wirings and drives, to actuators, gearboxes, and most importantly, microchips. Sitting atop an extensive EV parts supply network – many of which overlap with those used in a robot – China enjoys a cost advantage in building robots at scale thanks to structural conditions. The country has two metropolitan areas in the Yangtze River Delta near Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta in Shenzhen that boast unmatched manufacturing depth—both are home to a hive of hardware suppliers so dense that robot-makers can sometimes walk next door for a replacement part.

“For standardized products, China has cost-leadership. This applies to industrial robots, components such as servos and reducers, auxiliary products like grippers, and certain types of sensors,” said Stieler.

“What Chinese suppliers in these fields are still lacking is the knowledge of local standards. European companies have decades of experience in globalization. This cannot be replicated overnight, but you should not underestimate the capabilities of Chinese firms to learn and adapt.”

With China’s robotics momentum already accelerating and state support poised to expand even further, domestic companies are already closing the gap with foreign peers. But there remain niches where precision and reliability still play an important role, with parts of the ecosystem still relatively uncompetitive.

“In precision mechanics, Japanese manufacturers continue to dominate the market for heavy-load rotary vector reducers and long-life harmonic reducers due to lingering domestic gaps in fatigue strength, consistency and long-term reliability,” said Stieler. “Furthermore, Chinese manufacturers still heavily rely on imported high-precision absolute encoders, certain six-axis force/torque sensors, and automotive-grade, safety-certified controllers.”

A Western edge in the manufacturing of ball screws, a critical component for humanoid robot joints to convert between rotary and linear movement, means foreign producers in this space still hold an advantage.

Finally, high-stakes applications such as semiconductor wafer handling and surgical robotics demand specialized foreign materials like vacuum-grade components, medical-grade adhesives, high-performance polymers such as PEEK, and ultra-clean lubricants that domestic alternatives have not yet proven they can reliably replace.

China’s emphasis on embodied intelligence is a tacit recognition that AI has the potential to propel its robotics revolution, but a primary bottleneck is the reliance on high-performance AI processors and GPUs – such as those from Nvidia and Intel – required to act as the ‘brains’ for advanced and embodied intelligence robots.

Nvidia in particular still plays a central role in intelligent Chinese robots, both as a supplier of semiconductors but also with their programming environment CUDA. Huawei and other players such as Rockchip and Allwinner are trying to position themselves as alternatives, but existing network effects are strong.

The relative strengths of the Chinese and Swiss robotics industries suggest promising complementarity. China’s robotics ecosystem is defined by massive scale, rapid commercialization, robust government support, and state-backed manufacturing dominance. In contrast, the Swiss focus is on high value and high precision, deeptech research and premium specialized robotics, supported by elite institutions like ETH Zurich and a high concentration of startups. China leads in automation density and speed, while Switzerland leads on high-value, niche innovation.

The scale of the Chinese robotics ecosystem and potential total addressable market offers fruitful business opportunities for foreign companies. For instance Rivr, a Swiss delivery robotics startup spun off from ETH Zurich, opened for business in China in 2025 before its acquisition by Amazon in March.

For any company with ambitions to build intelligent hardware, nowhere is it faster and cheaper to prototype than in China. Some Swiss companies are already leveraging China’s deep supply chain and competitive cost base – Flexion, a startup that raised $50 million in Series A funding last year, is utilizing Chinese collaborative robots to train AI models to help humanoids function more autonomously, while other robotics startups are buying hardware from China.

At the same time, foreign companies – including those from Switzerland – are closer to Western customers, and know their requirements and procedures. Chinese manufacturers looking to compete in the European market must adapt to the regulatory environment. Stieler explains that anyone placing machines or robotics on the EU market needs to account for the EU’s Machinery Regulation timeline – applicable from January 2027 – and the AI Act as a regulatory framework for AI-related risks. This favors Swiss strengths in compliance-by-design and safety engineering as a market entry barrier. “Chinese firms targeting European markets will need EU-compatible safety and cybersecurity credentials. This is a structural pull for collaboration,” said Stieler.

Another reason to engage with the Chinese robotics and automation market, despite the trend toward more local players, is that the country is increasingly becoming an export destination for factory equipment. Stieler cites an example of a Swiss automation company whose largest single order last year came from a foreign system integrator in China that was building some production lines for export. “When the global machinery market is becoming more Chinese, suppliers of this ecosystem have to incorporate this in their strategies,” said Stieler.

Swiss niche players will increasingly need to work with Chinese system integrators and machine builders to stay relevant. When plants and equipment are assembled in China for global customers, Swiss component suppliers have to be part of that ecosystem or risk being designed out.

The pathway to a humanoid future depends on how fast technology progresses, and how regulations and consumer reception and perception take shape. Chip technology to emulate brain function is the key bottleneck, but exponential LLM and VLA development, combined with innovative data collection and training, suggest human-comparable performance could eventually be achieved.

The big question is how quickly Chinese companies can make progress: some in the humanoids and embodied intelligence space have reported growing investor pressure to demonstrate commercially viable applications. What has been reported so far, such as humanoid robots working in car factories, has been largely performative.

And while Chinese humanoids have dazzled audiences at home and abroad, caution should be exercised over the sector’s growing hype. Domestic firms are incentivized to exaggerate their purchases of robotics technologies to capture subsidies, while some robotics startups may be guilty of inflating their sales numbers. Central authorities have already warned of redundant products, duplicated investment and compressed space for genuine research and development.

The likeliest pathway is one of narrow, relatively repetitive tasks that require the flexibility and dexterity that come with robotic foundation models – a different paradigm compared with the deterministic way of programming robots for the past 60 years. Some companies are targeting intralogistics, quality testing, or simple assembly tasks, while others are already piloting in hospitals and care facilities.