Opinion | China just beat the US in soft power with the humanoid robot games

By hosting the games, Beijing is doing what Washington once excelled at: turning technical progress into cultural spectacle

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Humanoid robots take part in the 100m final race during the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on August 17. In robotics, failures are not wasted. Each fall becomes training data. Photo: EPA

Published: 8:30pm, 10 Sep 2025

On a humid Beijing track last month, the sprint to the future began. The athletes were not human; they were robots.

The inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games brought 280 teams from 16 countries to compete in 26 events, from sprints to gymnastics to football. China’s Unitree dominated the track, X-Humanoid excelled in industrial tasks, while Neotix and Booster Robotics won in gymnastics and football.

Triumphs were matched by mishaps: colliding, collapsing robots echoed earlier failures, when aeroplanes sputtered or self-driving cars stalled. Progress rarely begins with perfection.

In robotics, failures are not wasted. Each fall becomes training data. Analysts estimate humanoids need 10 million hours of real-world exposure to reach reliable autonomy. Simulations cannot replicate wind, terrain or collisions.

Chinese companies are pushing robots into unpredictable environments, from marathons to combat sports. Months earlier in Hangzhou, four Unitree robots donned gloves and helmets for a kickboxing match that looked like fiction. Roundhouse kicks may look entertaining, but they involve abilities robots must master to operate in factories, hospitals or homes.

Competitions accelerate development because they break the neat boundaries of labs. Rules had to be invented from scratch. It may seem trivial, but it marks the beginning of institutionalisation. Aviation only scaled up once regulators and standards gave it order. The internet only matured when governance bodies like ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) defined its protocols.

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