Inside China’s robotics revolution

The article examines China’s fast-moving robotics boom through visits to 11 companies, showing how AI, deep learning, and strong state-backed industrial policy are accelerating the push toward humanoid and factory automation. While Chinese firms such as Unitree, Galbot, Leju, and Guchi are making rapid gains in cost, scale, and deployment, the story also makes clear that truly general-purpose humanoid robots are still far from reality, with many systems remaining narrow, supervised, or heavily stage-managed. A central theme is that China’s advantage may come less from sci-fi-level intelligence and more from its dense hardware supply chains, abundant training labor, and aggressive local government support. The piece also highlights the social tradeoff: as automation expands, it could replace large numbers of factory workers even as new jobs emerge in robot training and teleoperation.

Read the full story on The Guardian →