China Accelerates Humanoid Robots in Industrial AI Race
China is accelerating humanoid robotics to turn artificial intelligence into industrial power. Beijing is backing the sector with national strategies, public funding, pilot lines and industrial policies designed to fuse AI with manufacturing. The push places robots among the key intelligent terminals expected to carry AI into factories, logistics, services and public systems.
China starts with a major structural advantage. Its factories installed more industrial robots over the past five years than all other countries combined. Domestic suppliers are also gaining ground, taking more than 57% of China’s industrial robot market in 2024 and overtaking foreign competitors at home for the first time.
Humanoids remain a small part of that machine base. China produced about 12,800 humanoid robots in 2025, roughly 90% of the global total, but that was still tiny compared with 556,000 industrial robots made in the same year. Most humanoids are being used in training centers, research labs, logistics sites and limited factory trials, not broad commercial deployments.
The country’s electric-vehicle and electronics supply chains give robotics companies a strong platform. Batteries, sensors, cameras, lidar, radar and related components already flow through domestic suppliers, encouraging EV and technology groups including XPeng, Baidu and Alibaba to move into robotics. China is localizing hardware quickly, but it remains heavily dependent on Nvidia’s AI chips, software tools and simulation platforms, while European, Japanese and U.S. suppliers still lead in many high-precision components.
The technology gap remains clear on factory floors. UBTech’s Walker humanoids are being tested in EV plants for quality checks, simple assembly and materials sorting; Kepler’s K2 handles basic logistics loads of up to 30 kg; and Midea’s six-armed MIRO U has supported assembly at a washing machine plant in Wuxi. These systems still lack the dexterity, precision and real-time autonomy needed to replace workers at scale, and costs would need to fall by at least half for wider commercial use.
Beijing is pressing ahead because labor shortages, rising wages and supply-chain security are becoming strategic pressures. AI-powered robots could raise productivity, but they could also disrupt employment and strain China’s growth model. If Chinese suppliers close the remaining gaps in high-end components, Europe could face a replay of the EV race, with China’s industrial capacity and state support reshaping another global technology market.