China remains world's largest industrial robot market

China has remained the world's largest market for industrial robots for an 11th consecutive year, a vice minister at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Thursday at the ongoing 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing.

Data shows that in 2023, China's industrial robot production had reached 430,000 sets, while the country's newly added robot installations accounted for more than half of the global market over the past three years, said Vice Minister Xin Guobin.

After a decade of rapid development, China has become a strong promoter of the growth of the global robot industry, Xin added.

Xin said that China's robot industry has made great progress in innovation and development, and new breakthroughs have been achieved in the research and development of bionic perception, cognition, planning and control technologies.

As of July 2024, China boasted more than 190,000 effective robot-related patents, accounting for about two-thirds of the global total.

According to Xin, China is deepening implementation of the "Robot plus Application" initiative, promoting the integration of robots across various industries. During the past 10 years, the number of robots per 10,000 workers in China's manufacturing sector has surged from 49 to 470.

The five-day conference in Beijing began on Wednesday, with 169 enterprises from around the world participating, including major global players like Tesla and Siasun. Participating companies are showcasing more than 600 units of robots, with over 60 of them making their world debuts at the conference. 

Humanoid robots boom

Industry insiders say that 2024 is set to be a key year for humanoid robots to venture out of labs and into workshops. The global market for humanoid robots is expected to hit $154 billion by 2035, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts.

Leveraging the advantages in its industry chain, consumption scenarios, databases and policy support, China is growing into an active force in the global humanoid robot industry.

For a long time before 2022, China's humanoid robot industry remained at the stage of basic research and technology accumulation, and the leading products were mostly small robots for education, along with a modest number of full-size humanoid robots for experiments, exhibitions or performances.

However, starting in 2023, the industry entered its breakout period, with the industrial scale surging to $549 million, up 85.7 percent year on year, according to research on the ecological development of the Chinese humanoid robot industry issued this year by the China Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) under MIIT.

"China boasts a large enough market and the world's best industrial supply chain, which is very conducive to the large-scale production of cost-effective products," said Jiao Jichao, vice president of UBTECH.

Data from Qichacha, a business data platform in China, shows that the country is now home to nearly 720,000 robot-related businesses. Among them, more than 20 enterprises are now producing complete humanoid robot products.

China has gained a first-mover advantage in the humanoid robot market that is basically consistent with developed countries, said Zhong Xinlong, an AI expert at CCID Consulting, a think tank under the MIIT.

(With input from Xinhua; Cover Image: A humanoid robot on display at the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, China, August 22, 2024. /CFP)

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