Throughout China, factories are automating at a dizzying pace. With engineers and electricians who deal with robot fleets, these operations are reducing the manufacturing cost in addition to improving quality.
As a result, Chinese factories may keep the prices of many of their exports, which will give it an advantage in the fight against commercial war and the high tariffs of President Donald Trump. China also faces new commercial barriers by the European Union and developing countries that range from Brazil and India to Türkiye and Thailand.
Currently, China’s factories are more automated than those in the United States, Germany or Japan. According to the International Robotics Federation, China has more industrial robots for every 10,000 workers in the manufacturing sector than any other country, with the exception of South Korea or Singapore.
China’s impulse towards automation has been marked by government guidelines and backed by huge investments. And, as robots replace workers, automation positions China to continue dominating mass production, even while their workforce ages and shows less disposition to accept industrial works.
He Liang, founder and executive director of Yunmu Intelligent Manufacturing, one of the main Chinese humanoid robots producers, commented that China was striving to convert robotics into a whole new business sector.
“The expectation for humanoid robots is to create another electric automobile industry,” he said. “So, from this perspective, it is a national strategy.”
Robots are not only replacing workers in car factories, but even in the thousands of small workshops in China.
In Elon Li’s workshop in Canton, the commercial nucleus of southeast China, there are 11 workers who cut and weld metal to make ovens and equipment to roast affordable meat. Now he is preparing to pay US%40 thousand to a Chinese company for a robotic arm with camera. The device uses artificial intelligence to observe how a worker welds the sides of an oven, and then reproduces the action with minimal human intervention.
Just four years ago, that system was only available with foreign robot companies and cost almost US $ 140 thousand. “Before, I would never have imagined investing in automation,” Li said, adding that a human employee “can only work eight hours a day, but a machine can work 24 hours.”
The largest companies bet much more about automation.
In Ningbo, a huge Zeekr plant, a Chinese manufacturer of electric cars, had 500 robots when it opened four years ago. There are now 820 and it is planned to incorporate many more.
Robotized cars, which happily sing Melodies of Kenny G to warn people of their presence, transport aluminum bullion to an automated elevator that raises the metal blocks to an oven located at the top of a Chinese manufacturing machine of 12 meters high. Once cast, aluminum is molded in the form of various body panels and other components. More robotized cars, and the occasional human driving a forklift, take the components to a warehouse.
Other robots move the panels to the assembly chain, where hundreds of robotic arms, working on equipment up to 16, interpret a complex dance to weld them and turn them into bodies. The welding zone is one of the so -called dark factories, which means that robots can work without workers and with the lights off.
Chinese factories still use many workers. Even with automation, these are necessary to do quality control and install some parts that require manual skill, such as cable harnesses. There are things that cameras and computers cannot do without help. Before the cars are painted, the workers still pass their handled hands on them and sand any small imperfection.
However, some of the last steps of quality control are also automating with the help of artificial intelligence.
Near the end of the Zeekr assembly chain, more than a dozen high -resolution cameras take photos of each car. Computers compare the images with an extensive database of vehicles assembled correctly and alert the factory staff if any discrepancy is found. The task is done in seconds.
“Almost all the work of our colleagues is to sit in front of a computer monitor,” said Pinky Wu, a Zeekr employee.
Zeekr and other Chinese car manufacturers are also using artificial intelligence to design cars and their characteristics more efficiently.
Carrie Li, a designer who works in the new Zeekr office building in Shanghai, uses AI to analyze how the different interior surfaces of a car will be combined.
“I have more free time to open my mind and explore what kind of fashion trends can be included inside cars,” Li said.
The United States car factories also use automation, but much of the team comes from China. Most of the world’s car assembly plants built in the last 20 years were in China, and an automation industry was developed around them.
Chinese companies also bought foreign suppliers from advanced robotics, such as Kuka, from Germany, and transferred much of their operations to China. When Volkswagen opened an electric vehicle factory in Hefei a year ago, it had only one robot from Germany, and 1,74 robots were manufactured in Shanghai.
China’s rapid advance in industrial robotics has been driven from top to bottom. The Beijing Initiative “Made in China 2025”, which began a decade ago, established 10 industries in which China sought to be competitive worldwide. Robotics was one of them.
To force the car industry to think about ways to use humanoid robots with two arms and two legs, for example, Beijing government officials told the main automobile manufacturers to rent robots and present videos of them performing tasks in their assembly plants.
Many shots were required for the videos to go well. The robots only did basic tasks, such as classifying car parts in a warehouse. However, the initiative has helped boost car manufacturers.
As a sample of the thrust of automation, the Beijing Municipal Government organized a half marathon for 12 thousand runners and 20 humanoid robots on Saturday. Only six robots reached the goal, and the fastest took almost three times more than the fastest humans. However, the event helped attract attention to robots.
Last month, Prime Minister Li Qiang, the second most important official in China, told his annual report to the legislative power that the country’s plans for this year would include an effort to “vigorously develop” smart robots. The country’s main economic planning agency announced a National Risk Capital Fund for Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and other advanced technologies, equipped with US $ 137 billion.
Chinese banks controlled by the government have increased loans to the industrial sector in the last four years in the amazing figure of US $ 1.9 billion. With that, the construction of factories has been paid, as well as the replacement of equipment in the existing ones.
Chinese universities produce around 350 thousand graduates in mechanical engineering per year, as well as electricians, welders and other qualified technicians.
In comparison, about 45 thousand mechanical engineers graduate from American universities every year.
Jonathan Hurst, robotics director and co -founder of Agility Robotics, one of the main American robots manufacturers, said that one of his greatest challenges had been to find qualified employees. When he was a postgraduate student at the Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh, Hurst commented, he was one of two mechanical engineers.
The rapid adoption of China automation worries some Chinese workers.
Geng Yuanjie, 27, drives a forklift at the Zeekr factory, where he has been working for two years. He said that in the Volkswagen factory where I worked before there were many less robots. Now, surrounded by robots, he has few companions to talk to during his 12 -hour shifts.
“I can feel the tendency towards automation,” Geng said as he watched a robot car dragged a shelf with automobile pieces with his forklift. He said that his high school studies may not be enough to access robot programming classes, and was concerned with losing his job at the hands of a robot.
“It’s not just something that worries me. Everyone worries,” Geng said.
Automation has threatened and even eliminated jobs worldwide for more than a century, which has often stopped its progress. In China, there are fewer obstacles than in almost any other place. There are no independent unions, and the control of the Communist Party hardly leaves the dissent.
Another factor that drives automation in China is the country’s demographic crisis.
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The amount of babies born every year has been reduced by almost two thirds since 1987. At the same time, two thirds of people who turn 18 are now enrolled in universities or institutes, an educational trajectory that has allowed a new generation to aspire to study careers outside work in factories.
“China’s demographic dividend is over,” said Stephen Dyer, head of the Industrial Division for Asia in Alixpartners, a consulting firm. “Now they face a demographic deficit, and the only way to get out of that is productivity.”