The writer is a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis
Chinese companies accounted for more than half of all the humanoid robot exhibitors on show at this year’s CES tech trade show in Las Vegas. That prominence was no accident. China’s position in robotics reflects an industrial dynamic that has been building for decades.
The country’s manufacturing system, anchored by dense, highly co-ordinated supply chains, means that it can move quickly in robotics — a field also known as embodied AI. Scale manufacturing and vertical integration allow Chinese tech companies to compress development cycles and aggressively lower costs.