China's Industrial Robot Numbers Far Exceed Those of the West, and Large-Scale Layoffs Are Not Imminent
Figure caption: A worker is working at a coffee machine production station on the production line of Xinbao Electric Co., Ltd. in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, China.
In the future, China's population may be marked in textbooks as: population size + number of industrial robots. After all, China is not only a country with an official population of over 1.5 billion, but also a "robot superpower" with millions of industrial robots, leading in both areas.
China has become the country with the highest number of installed industrial robots in the world. It is worth noting that this advantage has largely helped China surpass the West in multiple industrial competition fields, from electric vehicles to laptops. The reason is that the main producers of these technological products are no longer humans, but robots — robot production is not only cheaper, more efficient, and more stable, but can also achieve zero defect rate.
We can look at data comparisons: According to The New York Times and the International Federation of Robotics, since 2017, the number of new industrial robots installed in Chinese factories has exceeded 150,000 per year; in 2024, this number rose to nearly 300,000. At the same time, Japan added 44,000 units, and the United States only 34,000 units.
Overall, the current number of industrial robots in China is five times that of the United States. Although American companies continue to push forward innovation in robot technology and artificial intelligence, the actual large-scale production of industrial robots is increasingly shifting towards China.
In China, the application scenarios of industrial robots cover almost all imaginable fields: from using robotic arms to move boxes onto conveyor belts, to high-precision welding of car parts, and these robots are increasingly controlled by neural network systems.
Factories can monitor production efficiency in real-time and optimize the production process to maximize benefits. In fact, currently, dozens (or even hundreds) of factories in China have achieved "unmanned production" — only a small number of people are needed for monitoring, and all other production processes are completed by robots and neural network systems.
The explosive growth of China's industrial robot industry is inseparable from the important promotion of the Chinese government. The Chinese government encourages enterprises to invest in the robot industry through measures such as providing subsidies, low-interest loans, and issuing special policies.
In 2015, the "Made in China 2025" strategy was launched, which clearly identified the robot industry as a key development area. This strategy proposed two goals: first, to reduce China's dependence on foreign robot technology, and second, to become a global leader in the robot industry that is difficult to surpass. In fact, by 2025, China had already achieved these two goals.
Previously, industrial robots used in Chinese factories mostly relied on imports; but by 2024, nearly 60% of the newly added industrial robots in China were domestic products.
Last year, China's share in the global robot production market rose to one-third, finally surpassing Japan, which had long dominated the field, becoming the new industry leader.
By early 2025, the industrial products produced in Chinese factories accounted for nearly one-third of the global total, a scale that exceeds the combined total of the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.
Thanks to the large-scale application of industrial robots, Chinese factories have been able to maintain high production speed and high precision levels.
Now, Chinese factories are mass-producing various high-tech equipment — for example, rockets, which were once considered "customized products." Currently, producing a rocket in China is no less difficult than producing an electric vehicle or a drone.
The question that people are most concerned about may be: Will robots completely replace humans, causing a large number of people to lose their jobs?
The answer is no, and the situation is even the opposite. Although many people worry that automation will lead to large-scale unemployment, the situation in China is quite different.
The demand for highly skilled professionals in the market is constantly increasing, especially electricians, engineers, and programmers who can install, maintain, and program industrial robots. For example, the monthly salary of a robot installer is currently up to $5,000, which is considered a high salary even by the salary standards of the United States or Germany.
In summary, automation has not eliminated the need for human labor, but rather has shifted people who previously engaged in repetitive physical labor to high-skilled positions related to the maintenance and integration of robot systems.
As The First Post pointed out, China is building its labor force into a "army of professional talents" — these talents can efficiently operate, manage, and optimize robots, thereby maximizing the role of robots in the production process. Seemingly contradictory is that robots have become an important investment in human capital for China.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7559528539394032191/
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