"There aren't many young workers coming off the streets to fill jobs at factories. That's why you're seeing factory wages going up, and factories struggling to hire trained staff," said Geoff Crothall, a spokesman for the Hong Kong-based NGO China Labour Bulletin.

"It's not surprising that you'd see greater focus on greater automation of production."

China's growing affluence and family-planning laws have had dramatic effects on its workforce. Improved medical care has enabled older generations to live longer, and the one-child policy has effectively capped the younger generation's size.

In 2000, there were six working-age citizens for each citizen aged 60 and up; 20 years from now, it is predicted, there will be only two. Young Chinese have ambitions to find skilled, high-paying work to support their parents. They're better educated than their forebears, and less interested in menial assembly-line labour. Robots may fill the jobs they've left behind.

China still ranks low on the global robotic hierarchy, according to the state-run . Last year, there were 21 robots for every 10,000 workers in China, compared with a global average of 55. Japan has 339 robots for every 10,000 workers; Germany has 251.

This is changing. The Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn has revealed plans to boost its fleet of industrial robots from 10,000 to one million within three years. According to the company's CEO, Terry Gou, robots will replace workers for tasks such as spraying, assembling and welding.

Chinese officials have openly championed the industry's growth. The Shanghai municipal government has called robotics "one of its major industries", according to . At a press conference on Monday, the vice-minister for human resources and social security, Yang Zhiming , emphasised the need to "upgrade equipment and technology".

Where the government sees potential, Chinese firms see the potential for incentives. "China needs to subsidise its own enterprises - to improve its own equipment manufacturing, and to make sure that its own enterprises can compete with foreign technology," said an employee of the Shanghai-based Siasun Robot and Automation Company. The employee said Siasun had not yet received subsidies from the Shanghai government, but that a deal might be in the works.

Home-grown robots - or in Chinese, meaning literally "mechanical people" - have proliferated beyond the factories.

China's National University of Defence Technology unveiled the country's first bipedal humanoid robot in 2000, after more than a decade of research. Chinese media lauded the block-headed robot as a technological advance, but its slapdash appearance - and the unfortunate placement of a protruding joint - made it the brunt of online jokes in tech-savvy Japan.

A Chinese farmer, Wu Yulu, shot to fame in 2009 for building robots that could pull rickshaws, climb walls and light cigarettes.

In 2010, a hotpot restaurant opened in coastal Shandong province with more than a dozen -style droids as entertainers and hosts.

In March, a Chinese restaurateur launched the Noodle-bot, a 14,800 yuan (HK$18,300) robot that can slice noodles out of blocks of dough.

"Young people aren't willing to do such dirty, tiring work," the Hebei inventor Cui Runguan told Zoomin TV. "So not only in sliced-noodle restaurants, but also in many other regards, we'll extend our technological development - and there will be many, many machines that can replace human labour."

The Guardian