Global Times.
French "Les Echos" article on January 10, original title: China leads in the global industrial robot sprint Older workers and high costs have pushed Chinese companies to accelerate the development of automation and robotics.
"In the current context, China's manufacturing industry urgently needs to improve its competitiveness, either by increasing factory automation to reduce overall production costs, or by shifting to more refined and personalized high-end products," Citibank analysts said. "In the 10 years from 2011 to 2020, deliveries of industrial robots in China grew by an average of 27 percent per year, far exceeding the global (12 percent) and Japanese (6 percent) levels," but the density of robots in China is still much lower than in Japan, South Korea and Germany. This means that the growth potential of China's industrial robots is huge."
According to the International Federation of Robotics, more than 290,000 industrial robots were installed in China in 2022, a figure six times that of Japan, seven times that of the United States, 12 times that of Germany, and 40 times that of France. Last year, China accounted for half of the world's new industrial robots, and there are now more than 1.5 million robots in operation in Chinese factories. In China's electric vehicle industry, robotization is advancing strongly.
Although China is already the world's largest producer of industrial robots, manufacturers are using the most advanced technology from foreign countries. At the factory of a Chinese car brand, the director of the orange robot from the German company KUKA (which has been acquired by the Chinese Midea Group), explains: "We chose KUKA robots based on commercial standards, quality assurance, efficiency and precision. (Written by Federik Chaffe, translated by Dong Ming).