China, once the manual labour “workshop of the world”, has become the largest buyer of industrial robots, as rising wage costs and growing competition from emerging economies have forced manufacturers to turn to technology.
The country bought one in five robots sold globally in 2013, overtaking tech-savvy Japan for the first time, in its attempt to drive productivity gains.
China bought 36,560 industrial robots last year, a rise of almost 60 per cent against 2012, according to new figures from the International Federation of Robotics, an industry group based in Germany. Japan bought 26,015 robots in 2013, with the US in third place with 23,679.
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