MKsport South China's Guangdong Province, on December 11, 2024. Photo: Courtesy of UBTECH" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-02-14/abb330ef-53bf-491c-b31d-da9e0ce05f96.jpeg" />

UBTECH's Walker S1 industrial humanoid robot in operation at Foxconn's Longhua facility in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, on December 11, 2024. Photo: Courtesy of UBTECH

Entering 2025, a fusion of technology and traditional culture took center stage at the state broadcaster CCTV's Spring Festival Gala - a group 16 humanoid robots named "Fuxi" developed by Chinese startup Unitree Robotics, dressed in folkloric jackets, performed traditional "Yangge" dance with very agile handkerchief movements and precise formations.

From laboratories to factories, from stages to production lines, Chinese-made humanoid robots are making inroads into many sectors including manufacturing and services which are set to take the lead in the global race for technology predominance. 

The show sparked public discussion on China's advances in humanoid robotics, which also acted as a symbol of the industry pivoting to mass production.

On the performance stage, Unitree's "Fuxi" robot, also known as Unitree H1, uses AI-driven full-body motion control technology, capable of achieving a maximum joint torque of 360 Newton-meter. Coupled with 360° panoramic depth perception technology, they can precisely grasp every movement in the surroundings.

Growing use scenarios 

Currently, a number of Chinese companies are accelerating humanoid robot trials across various industries. Manufacturing giant Foxconn and Shenzhen-based humanoid robot company UBTECH announced on January 15, 2025 that the two companies will form a partnership to incorporate UBTECH's humanoid robots into Foxconn's intelligent manufacturing process.

Prior to partnering with Foxconn, UBTECH's humanoid robots were already deployed by automakers such as BYD, Geely, and FAW-Volkswagen's Qingdao factory, UBTECH told the Global Times.

The trend of many domestic humanoid robots "get jobs" in the manufacturing sector is increasingly recognized as the inevitable industrial evolution, Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, told the Global Times. For example, Unitree's humanoid robots have been deployed in the plants owned by China's major electric car maker Nio. 

"We are taking a market-driven approach. Once the technology gains traction and shows strong commercial potential, we will scale up production of our robots," Wang said.

Wei Jiaxing, head of the Public Relation at National and Local Co-built Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center told the Global Times on Saturday that, performing highly repetitive tasks in manufacturing, or in the elderly care sector, monitoring crucial signs of life and providing vital companionship, as well as serving in patrols and dangerous tasks in special operations, humanoid robots have great potential for application.

"Smart robots are already in real-time use, and we expect to see broader use scenarios at the end of 2025," Wei told the Global Times.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in November 2023 issued a guideline targeting the innovative development of humanoid robotics, which stated by 2025, the country's innovation system for humanoid robots will be largely fulfilled, with major breakthroughs in a series of key technologies such as "brain, cerebellum, and limbs", and that robot production will reach an internationally advanced level by then.

On January 17, 2025, Shenzhen-based Leju Robotics delivered its 100th full-size humanoid robot to Beijing-based carmaker BAIC Group, marking a significant step toward mass production, the company told the Global Times in a recent interview.

Production capacity 

What lies behind Leju's steady delivery is the company's upgraded production capacity. In December 2024, Leju launched a humanoid robot manufacturing line in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, with annual capacity estimated at 200 humanoid robots, reported Shanghai Securities News. 

On January 6, 2025, humanoid robot manufacturer AgiBot in Shanghai announced that the company's 1,000th mass-produced general-purpose embodied robot officially came off the assembly line. AgiBot set a production goal of 962 robots in 2024, according to a video posted on its social media late last year. 

If more technological breakthroughs are made, humanoid robots could see a compound annual growth rate of 94 percent between 2025 and 2035, with the sector reaching a market size of $154 billion by 2035, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

In April 2024, the first China Humanoid Robot Industry Conference was convened in Beijing. An industrial report released during the conference showed that China's humanoid robot market size ranges from 2.76 billion yuan ($377.56 million) in 2024 and will likely reach 75 billion yuan by 2029, which will account for 32.7 percent of the world's total and rank first in the world, and the size of the sector is expected to reach 300 billion yuan by 2035, Xinhua News Agency reported.

To meet a surging demand for humanoid robotics research and development and ramp up mass production of smart robots, National and Local Co-built Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center's open-sourced "Tien Kung" humanoid robot is now available for research institutes and enterprises to conduct further technical verification and development in accordance with market needs. 

What's more, the innovation center in Beijing also launched RoboMIND, a multi-embodiment intelligence normative data, which is designed to enhance the training of humanoid robots and meeting the needs for efficient and targeted training of embodied robotic intelligence in complex scenarios. 

Pan Helin, a member of the Expert Committee for the Information and Communication Economy under the MIIT, noted that mass production of intelligent robots will start once users widely recognize their functions.

Pan noted that, based on China's advantages in manufacturing across almost all industrial sectors, the country's progress in robotics will be shored up incessantly.