Editor's note: Belunn Se, a special commentator for CGTN, is a senior industry observer based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in China. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

At the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, hundreds of humanoid robots moved in precise coordination across the stage. Humanoid machines executed high-difficulty maneuvers, replicated subtle human micro-expressions and demonstrated autonomous folding and cooking. For hundreds of millions of viewers, this was more than a dazzling display of technology. It was a vivid snapshot of China's next-generation productive forces in motion.

After humanoid robots stunned global audiences at the 2025 Gala, the 2026 lineup marked a comprehensive upgrade. Robots from Unitree Robotics completed an advanced "Airflare" seven-and-a-half spin. Noetix Robotics showcased 1:1 replication of on-stage facial micro-expressions. Galbot demonstrated autonomous decision-making in folding clothes and cooking. Magiclab presented a synchronized performance by one hundred robots under unified group control. From motion control to multi-robot coordination, from fine-grained perception to autonomous decision-making, the spectacle reflected a systemic breakthrough in China's AI and robotics industries. The Gala stage has become a powerful national showcase for what China calls new quality productive forces. As one viewer from Australia remarked, China is demonstrating how a civilization rooted in deep tradition can simultaneously advance into a highly sophisticated technological era.

From stage performance to factory floor

The agility seen on stage mirrors a deeper rhythm in China's industrial landscape. Today's Chinese robots are rapidly shedding their "performance-only" image and stepping into real industrial roles.

In automotive factories, UBTECH's Walker S2 collaborates with mobile robots, enabling unmanned logistics and automated material handling under centralized cluster scheduling. This multi-agent coordination is driving manufacturing away from manual transport toward stable, flexible and fully automated operations.

AI's Scaling Law tells us that when model scale and data volume reach a critical threshold, capability does not grow linearly – it surges. The robotics industry is now nurturing a similar virtuous cycle: Foundational intelligence continues to generalize, large-scale deployment expands application scenarios, mass production drives down hardware costs, real-world data feeds back into model training, algorithms iterate and upgrade, and intelligent capabilities steadily emerge – further unlocking new demand.

Only when the general intelligent "brain" of the robot achieves a breakthrough comparable to ChatGPT that can sense and handle random events in the physical world, will the industry truly cross the tipping point and enter a phase of accelerated, exponential growth.

From factories to homes, deployment is accelerating across industrial inspection and precision assembly, medical rehabilitation, household assistance, and commercial delivery. Humanoid robots are no longer confined to research labs; they are moving into every sector of the economy. Over the next five to 10 years, they are poised to reshape manufacturing, services, and entire supply chains, becoming a defining force in the rise of next-generation productive capacity.

From fast to reliable: The road to trustworthy AI

The future of AI lies not only in speed, but in stability and trust.

Next-generation systems must resolve three core challenges: consistency across perception and reasoning pipelines, deliberate reasoning time with built-in validation and reflection, and mechanisms for confidence estimation. Instead of instant responses, future AI systems will increasingly trade speed for reliability, moving from "fast reaction" to "trusted execution."

Embodied AI represents the next frontier. When large models are integrated into physical humanoid systems, they begin to understand causality in the physical world. The robots seen on the Gala stage were not simply executing scripted routines; they demonstrated early forms of adaptive autonomy. This leap – from perception to cognition to action – defines the next chapter of intelligent systems.

A global contest of strategy and governance

Artificial intelligence has become a defining variable of national competitiveness.

Last July, the U.S. government explicitly declared its intent to "win the AI race," accelerating infrastructure investment, loosening domestic regulatory constraints, and tightening export controls. Through initiatives such as the "Pax Silica” supply-chain framework, the United States aims to consolidate advantages in semiconductors and high-performance computing, reinforcing its leadership in foundational chips and large models.

China, by contrast, has carved out a distinctive path driven by an "application-first" philosophy and strong national coordination. It holds clear advantages in computer vision, speech recognition and scenario-based deployment, supported by the world's most dynamic digital consumer market and an abundance of real-world industrial testbeds.

Guided by policy, China is accelerating the formation of a self-sustaining domestic ecosystem that tightly integrates computing power, foundational models and applications. The "AI+" initiative continues to expand AI adoption across sectors, from manufacturing and healthcare to meteorology and energy systems, embedding intelligent technologies deep within the real economy. For example, Huawei's Pangu weather model has compressed global weather forecasting into second-level computation. From "technology importer" to "standards exporter," China is steadily building a governance framework that places equal emphasis on development and security. 

Early 2025 saw the emergence of DeepSeek R1, a cost-efficient model that disrupted assumptions about high training expenditures and challenged Silicon Valley's dominance. During this year's Spring Festival, ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 video generation model demonstrated near-industrial-grade visual realism. It adopts a unified multimodal audio-video joint generation architecture that supports text, image, audio, and video inputs, leading to the most comprehensive multimodal content reference and editing capabilities in the industry, not only delivering new year greetings videos but also significantly lowering production costs across film, advertising, e-commerce and gaming. These developments underscore China's distinctive strength in rapid iteration and scaled deployment.

Governance: Installing brakes on a high-speed train

As AI accelerates, governance must keep pace. In 2025 and 2026, global AI governance shifted from abstract ethical declarations to concrete industrial implementation.

The United States adopted a competitive approach characterized by domestic deregulation and external restriction. The European Union advanced comprehensive oversight through its AI Act, positioning itself as a regulatory superpower.

China, for its part, has demonstrated remarkable strategic resolve by upholding a balanced approach that gives equal weight to development and security. From proposing to set up a global body to coordinate the regulation of AI to introducing regulations on the labeling of AI-generated and synthetic content, China is advancing a model of precise regulation and top-level design, ensuring that innovation is neither stifled by overcaution nor allowed to run unchecked. This governance framework is gradually evolving from "technology import" to "standards export," positioning China to contribute its own solutions and institutional frameworks to the global discourse on AI governance.

AI risks are no longer confined to laboratories. Deepfakes, information pollution and algorithmic bias pose tangible challenges to social order. Companion AI systems that engage human emotions raise profound ethical questions about influence and manipulation. Without a robust safety architecture, the flywheel of innovation could destabilize.

Technological progress must therefore proceed alongside structured risk assessment, testing frameworks, and accountability mechanisms.

A national classroom for a technological era

The 2026 Spring Festival Gala reached hundreds of millions across platforms and continents. It was more than a cultural celebration; it served as a national classroom, translating complex technological transformation into accessible, widely shared imagery.

The robots on stage were not merely mechanical performers. They symbolized a broader civilizational moment – where technological dynamism is rooted in cultural continuity.

New-quality productive forces are not abstract formulas. They embody the vitality of innovation, dynamic, confident, and forward-looking, much like the spirited symbolism of the Year of the Horse. As China integrates advanced intelligence into the fabric of everyday life, it is not simply advancing technology; it is shaping a new chapter in human civilization.

Standing at this watershed moment, what we witness is more than rotating steel frames and synchronized code. We are witnessing the fusion of tradition and transformation, and the unfolding of a future in which technology carries not only power, but purpose.

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