There Are More Robots Working in China Than the Rest of the World Combined
China has embarked on a campaign to use more robots in its factories, transforming its manufacturing industries and becoming the dominant maker.
Robots at work on an auto assembly line in Hefei, China. Chinese robotics companies, like the electric vehicle and artificial intelligence industries, have benefited from a national push for growth.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times
By
Meaghan Tobin and
Keith Bradsher
Sept. 25, 2025, 8:00 a.m. ET
China is making and installing
factory robots at a far greater pace than any other country, with the United States a distant third, further strengthening China’s already dominant global role in manufacturing.
There were more than two million robots working in Chinese factories last year, according to a report released Thursday by the International Federation of Robotics, a nonprofit trade group for makers of industrial robots. Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined, the report found. American factories installed 34,000.
While Chinese factories have been using more robots, they have also gotten better at making them. The government has used public capital and policy directives to spur Chinese companies to become leaders in robotics and other advanced technologies like semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Worldwide, robots and artificial intelligence are playing an increasingly prominent and disruptive role in manufacturing. Factory robots range from machines that weld car parts together to claws that lifts boxes onto conveyor belts. As technology helps factories become more efficient, some are making do with fewer workers and altering the roles of others.
Over the past decade, China has embarked on a broad campaign to use more robots in its factories, become a major maker of robots and combine the industry with advances in artificial intelligence.
Chinese companies have benefited from a national push that mirrors how the country’s
electric vehicle and
artificial intelligence industries have grown, said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia, a tech research firm.
“This is not a coincidence,” Mr. Su said. “It has taken many years of investment by Chinese companies.”
China’s drive for factory automation has been a key part of achieving its position as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Factories in China have installed more than 150,000 robots each year since 2017. At the same time, manufacturing output ballooned. By the start of this year, factories in China were making
nearly a third of all manufactured goods worldwide, more than the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain combined.
Robot installations fell last year, compared with the year before, in all four of the next largest factory robot-using countries: Japan, the United States, South Korea and Germany. Japan installed 44,000.
In 2015, Beijing made it a top priority for China to become globally competitive in robotics as part of its
Made in China 2025 campaign to import fewer advanced manufactured goods.
Industries received almost unlimited access to loans from state-controlled banks at low interest rates as well as help in buying foreign competitors, direct infusions of government money and other assistance. And in 2021, the government issued a detailed national strategy for expanded deployment of robots.
“You can see how well that strategy worked out; without a strategy, a country is always at a disadvantage,” said Susanne Bieller, the general secretary of the robotics federation.
China’s share of the world’s robot manufacturing rose last year to a third of the global supply, up from a quarter in 2023, according to the federation. Japan, the previous leader, dropped to 29 percent of the world market from 38 percent the year before.
Until last year, China installed more imported robots in its factories than domestically made ones. But last year, nearly three-fifths of the robots installed in China were also made in the country.
Overall, China has five times as many robots working in its factories as the
United States.
Image
Robotic carts at the Zeekr auto plant in Ningbo, China, haul heavy loads around the building. Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times
The federation’s data does not include humanoid robots, the two-legged machines that remain
largely in experimental stages. But the government support has led to a boom in start-ups making humanoid robots and an ecosystem of companies that make specialized components for robots, such as motorized joints.
The humanoid robot start-up Unitree Robotics, based in the
tech hot spot of Hangzhou, said earlier this month that it planned to go public by the end of the year. Unitree’s latest basic humanoid robots are priced at about $6,000 in China, a fraction of the price of robots made by the robot maker Boston Dynamics, a leading American player in the industry.
Still, Chinese companies lag foreign competitors in their ability to make some key components used in humanoid robots, including some sensors and semiconductors, said Mr. Su at Omdia.
The top versions of many components are still made in countries with longtime leads in robot manufacturing like Germany and Japan, he said.
“If you were to assemble a really top-notch humanoid robot, it would be almost completely non-China-made,” Mr. Su said. “Maybe it would have one or two Chinese components, but by and large the entire system would be very international.”
But when it comes to factory robots, China has multiple advantages. China has large numbers of skilled electricians and specialized computer programmers who can install robots. Even China has had some shortages of robot installation specialists, however, with
pay surging to almost $60,000 a year.
And China has an artificial intelligence industry that is strongly focused on using the new technology to track and improve every aspect of factory equipment performance.
Companies in China “are using A.I. to swoop in and say which machines are doing great and which are a little off,” said Cameron Johnson, a supply chain consultant in Shanghai specializing in automation. Outside of China, he added, “people aren’t looking at it as a manufacturing tool, at least not yet, and not how the Chinese are.”
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