China's emerging robot industry seeks new markets overseas

DW (English)

China's robotics industry may not be at the cutting edge, but it’s catching up with the rest of the world at lightning speed. Now Beijing wants to see robotics in all areas of life and a lucrative product for export.

Transcript

00:00Picking strawberries is easy if you're human, but revolutionary if you're a robot.

00:082025 marks the end of Beijing's five-year robotics plan, an ambitious vision to become

00:17a world leader in cutting-edge robotics across industries.

00:20The Chinese government wants to see robots in all areas of life, from agriculture to industry.

00:29He's actually working on designing the 3D model of the casting mold.

00:34And it doesn't really have a choice. With a huge population gap,

00:38soon human workers will no longer be an option.

00:41In China, most of the agriculture workers are 15 and 60 years old.

00:46So probably 20 years later, it's difficult to find the farming workers.

00:52Because the young generation, they don't like the poor working environment,

00:56and also the pay is relatively low.

00:58The strawberry picker combines computer vision and AI

01:01to harvest strawberries with less damage than a human can.

01:04But Chinese farmers are put off by the cost, and domestic demand is low.

01:10Research by both the European and US Chamber of Commerce says Beijing's 2025 plan to become

01:15a technological world leader has only partially met its goals,

01:20and that Chinese industry does still rely on some foreign technology.

01:29This robot uses an NVIDIA chip. The manufacturer hopes it will find a home in the fields of Europe.

01:35The China Robot Industry Alliance says the total number of exported robots is less than 5%.

01:41The Made in China label still makes customers cautious until they see what the robots can do.

01:56This self-driving forklift knows that human means slow down, another forklift means stop,

02:06and an inanimate object means navigate around it and carry on with your tasks.

02:11There's a lot of new players entering the market in Europe and the US with kind of copycat

02:22versions of different robotics that you'll see at a lot of the trade shows.

02:26There's a lot of innovations coming out of China, and I think it's taking the world some time to

02:31catch up to that, but we're getting there.

02:33China's domestic brand market share is at less than half. Beijing had wanted that figure to hit

02:4070% by this year. China imports more high-end machinery and robots than it exports. But the US

02:48President Donald Trump may have given the sector an unexpected helping hand.

02:52Our US market, our revenue, grow three to five times this year compared with last year.

02:59I guess that's because of this manufacture back to US trend. That really helps with,

03:05you know, the factory want to expansion and how a lot of budget to spend.

03:10This medical robot can't replace a human, but instead works with a surgeon. The doctor sits at the

03:16console, while technically it's the robot that's doing the surgery.

03:21Now our operators are using the instruments to remove the shell from a quail egg. Actually,

03:31it's a raw quail egg. This is to simulate the most delicate motions during a surgery. But it's still

03:39relatively easier when you're using this robot to use your hands. Okay, good.

03:45Surgery successful on eggs and on humans. The manufacturer says patients suffer less bleeding

03:52and recover faster from their keyhole surgeries, including removing cancer. And it costs half the

03:58price of its US competitor. China is automating at a rate that far outstrips any other country in the

04:06world. The International Federation of Robotics ranks the country third in the world for number of

04:12industrial robots, overtaking Germany in 2023. It doubled its ratio of industrial robots to workers

04:20within just four years. And unlike the West, Beijing can plough money into robotics at scale

04:26and in the long term, meaning it can corner strategic markets that take decades to become profitable.

04:33Its technological advances are also becoming increasingly difficult to track.

04:38Analysts warn China lags until suddenly it leads.

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