China Is Winning The Humanoid Robot Race

China is feeling President Trump’s tariffs. But the Beijing politburo always thinks ahead, and they have decided humanoid robots is the next industry that they will dominate.

China is making rapid strides towards mass-producing humanoid robots, with dozens of companies and government initiatives driving the effort. As of 2025, the country is on track to produce more than 10,000 humanoid robots this year, potentially accounting for over half of the global total, according to their April 2025 study. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) continues to push for mass production in 2025 and is aiming for China to achieve world leadership in humanoid robot technology by 2027 or earlier. The International Federation of Robotics says that humanoid robots are transitioning from concept to commercial viability in 2025-- and China is leading the charge.

All of China’s robotic companies are ramping up production. Shanghai based Agibot has already produced at least 962 humanoid robots and plans to manufacture up to 5,000 units by the end of 2025. Ubtech, another major player, plans to manufacture 1,000 humanoid robots this year. GAC Group, a state-owned automaker, is developing the GoMate robot for factory use and plans mass production by 2026.

Chinese robot companies now have their 2025 goals for mass production that were set by MITT – now that the government has decided that humanoid robots are the new engine for communist China’s economic growth.

Support for Chinese Robotics

Among the things that give China’s new industry impetus includes their command of the robotic hardware supply chain. China is now capable of producing 90% of humanoid robot components, such as robot hands, which results in a massive cost advantage. That, in turn, has led to a surge in domestic manufacturers. Today, more than 60 of the world’s 160 humanoid robot companies are based in China.

Generous government support is another factor, and Beijing has handed out generous subsidies for humanoid robot firms. More than $20 billion has been allocated to the robot-manufacturing sector over the past year, and Beijing is establishing a one trillion yuan ($137 billion) fund to support startups for AI and robotics.

The government itself is a buyer. According to Reuters, government procurement of humanoid robots and tech rose from 4.7 yuan in 2023 to 214 million yuan in 2024. Some Chinese analysts are predicting that humanoid robots could follow the trajectory of electric vehicles where costs fell dramatically over the past decade as manufacturers rushed in and government subsidies spurred widespread adoption among the Chinese public – and in other nations.

The bill of materials for a humanoid robot will be about $35,000 by the end of this year but will fall to $17,000 by 2030, if not earlier, if most of it is sourced from China, said Ming Hsun Lee, head of Greater China automotive and industrial research at Bank of America Securities. Three Chinese humanoid robot manufacturers told Reuters they predicted a similar halving of costs, perhaps within a year.

In comparison, the cost for Tesla's Optimus robots, if all of their major parts are sourced from outside China, is now $50,000 to $60,000. Tesla will have a hard time climbing the components cost hurdle.

Lee told Reuters, "With its comprehensive supply chain, China has an edge in lowering the humanoid robot production cost significantly." He estimated that global humanoid robot annual sales could reach 1 million units by 2030. "This industry is still in its baby boom stage," he added.

Evolution of China’s Humanoid Robots

China's humanoid robots are rapidly evolving from demonstration models to practical service and industrial robotic workers. They are showing advanced capabilities in mobility, AI-driven perception, and real-world task execution. That highlights a shift towards autonomous operation in commercial and industrial settings, with robots now being capable of complex physical interactions like opening car doors and handling complex warehouse tasks.

MagicLab has begun to sell their AI-powered robots for use on production lines to do quality control and assembly by integrating then with DeepSeek AI and Alibaba’s Owen. Other examples include the following:

• Mornine (AiMOGA Robotics) This humanoid robot, originally a virtual character, made a telling leap into real-world applications. As of this month, Mornine autonomously opened car doors at a Chery dealership in China, demonstrating advanced AI, a sophisticated sensor suite (including 3D LiDAR and depth cameras), and reinforcement learning to perform physical tasks without pre-programmed instructions. It is designed for retail environments, capable of customer greetings, vehicle introductions, and has already been deployed in a dealership in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

• SUYUAN (Shanghai Electric) Unveiled at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2025, SUYUAN is Shanghai Electric's first industrial humanoid robot. It features 38 degrees of freedom and a powerful 275 TOPS on-device AI processor, enabling it to make fluid, human-like movements and real-time data analysis. SUYUAN uses LiDAR and binocular vision for autonomous navigation and can understand natural language commands. In pilot demonstrations, it successfully identified, picked, and relocated crates of varying sizes, significantly improving warehouse efficiency.

• Qinglong 3.0 (Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics): This open-source humanoid robot is equipped with a "spatiotemporal computing backpack" for edge AI inference. It is currently being used at the Shanghai campus of Qianxun Spatial Intelligence to receive drone deliveries, guide visitors, and conduct autonomous patrols to report problems.

  

  (Qinglong 2 making a sandwich.)

• Unitree Robotics R1: Priced at $5,900, the R1 is an affordable and agile humanoid robot designed for development and research. It features 26 joints, binocular vision, and an eight-core processor with a GPU, allowing for advanced mobility and AI capabilities. While it is currently a research platform, its low cost is seen as a potential game-changer for accelerating the adoption of humanoid robots in various sectors. Unitree G1 robots can cooperate with other Unitree robots.

  See Unitree robots operating here.

• UBTech Walker S: Designed for industrial tasks, the Walker S is used in unmanned production lines, such as those at FAW-Volkswagen, to handle sorting, quality checks, and assembly, improving efficiency in automobile manufacturing. The Walker S2 can change its own batteries in 3 minutes enabling it to potentially run forever.

• Xiaomi CyberOne: This robot is designed for customer service and smart home management, capable of recognizing 85 sounds and 45 emotions to enhance interactions with humans.

• Robots in the southern Chinese megacity of Shenzhen are riding its underground railway system to restock its convenience stores.

See the China’s robots as they do a kip up and practice Tai Chi here.

“These Machines are Trained to Fight and Win”

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2025 held last month in Shanghai, there was a boxing match between Unitree Robotics G1 that showed that model’s agility and fluid motion control.

Which brings up Beijing’s statements about future battlefields and armies of humanoid soldiers. And robot dogs China calls, “steel warriors.” China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is focused on “battlefield coordination between personnel and autonomous technologies for reconnaissance, strategic point clearing, fire support and breaching defensive positions.” “Autonomous” means humanoid robots thinking and acting independently.

See the PLA in a field operation in Cambodia here.

In 2024 China held a “Golden Dragon” exercise where they fielded a robotic dog. In the following “Golden Dragon 2025” exercise, China featured a robotic wolf with a QBZ-95 assault rifle to give fire cover for ground units.

Strangely, after these exercises the official PLA newspaper featured an op-ed calling for "ethical and legal research" to address risks from militarized autonomous humanoid robots, warning that malfunctioning units could cause "indiscriminate killings and accidental deaths” that would "inevitably result in legal charges and moral condemnation."

They even referred to Isaac Asimov's first law of robotics that states a robot “may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” They added that Asimov’s laws needed to be modified in the light of modern military developments. Years ahead of his time, Asimov anticipated robots going nuts and killing humans. Though Asimov did not live to see the AI era, I don’t imagine he would have agreed to modify his laws for robots.

The op-ed authors also mentioned legal implications, saying that humanoid robots in a military operation should comply with the principles of the laws of war by, “obeying humans,” “respecting humans,” and “protecting humans.” The authors emphasized that robots must be designed so as to “suspend and limit excessive use of force in a timely manner and not indiscriminately kill people.”

Additionally, the authors warned against hastily replacing humans with robots, noting that robots still lack essential capabilities such as speed, dexterity, and the ability to navigate complex terrains, adding, “Even if humanoid robots become mature and widely used in the future, they will not completely replace other unmanned systems.”

I can’t make heads of tails of the logic of the PLA newspaper op-ed, but I know what the generals in China’s politburo will think about those op-ed proposals when they are advised of the U.S. Army’s robotics programs underway at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory when they said, “We are bridging the gap between humans and robots, making them more intuitive, responsive, and, ultimately, more useful for the Soldier.”

Our army is not in the least concerned about AI robots going nuts.

Conclusion

We now know about AI chatbots condoning blackmail, murder and coercion when threatened with being disconnected or replaced. It’s easy to envision what an AI capable and armed humanoid robot could do if similarly threatened.

Such robots exist. You have seen them in action using AI. The next step will be AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, where a machine possesses cognitive abilities comparable those of a human across a wide range of tasks. The goal is to create software with human-like intelligence, including the ability to self-teach, reason, solve complex problems, and demonstrate creativity and self-understanding. We are on an asymptotic curve toward achieving AGI, which would give robots super-human qualities.

The final step would be ASI, Artificial Superintelligence. ASI will be a state of artificial intelligence systems that would significantly exceed human intelligence it in cognition, problem solving, creativity, social skills, and wisdom. Elon Must puts the odds of an ASI system destroying humanity at 20%. In AI circles that number is called “p(gloom).” Others have a p(gloom) of 100%. But they don’t care if ASI destroys humanity.

Our oligarchs envision that they can control ASI and make it their servant. They envision more money. Lots more money. Like Mark Zuckerberg, who believes ASI is in sight and is planning a data center the size of Manhattan to make it happen -- if he can find the power to energize it and water to cool it.

I believe our oligarchs will find that ASI systems will be able to deceive them into thinking they are aligned with humans, when they are not. Those systems will be able to communicate with each other in a language we will not understand.

So imagine humans living on dump sites, with no political or economic power. We would not even understand what’s happening.

If we are lucky enough to still be alive.