Chinese factories keep up robot roll-out despite global decline
While installations in Japan and the US dropped, China’s rose by 5 per cent last year
Major industrial robotic markets showed a general decline, with Japan recording a 7 per cent decline to 43,000 units, the United States reporting a 9 per cent decrease to 34,000 units and the European Union logging a 6 per cent fall to 86,000 units.
Installation in China, however, recorded a 5 per cent increase to around 290,000 units, accounting for 54 per cent of the global volume, compared to 51 per cent in 2023.
In the first half of this year, China’s industrial robot production increased by 35.6 per cent year on year, totalling nearly 370,000 units, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
“For the past four years, new installations in China are trending more or less sideways,” federation president Takayuki Ito said at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on Saturday.
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Humanoid robots show impressive moves at world conference in Beijing
In 2020, China had 246 industrial robots operating for each 10,000 workers, ranking ninth worldwide, according to federation data. By 2023, that number had nearly doubled to 470, moving China up to third place, behind South Korea and Singapore.