China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War – Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are giving China an edge in car manufacturing and other industries.
China Has an Army of Robots on Its Side in the Tariff War – Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are giving China an edge in car manufacturing and other industries.
10 Comments
From the article
Factories are being automated across China at a breakneck pace. With engineers and electricians tending to fleets of robots, these operations are bringing down the cost of manufacturing while improving quality.
As a result, China’s factories will be able to keep the price of many of its [exports](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/business/china-trade-surplus-trump.html) lower, giving it an advantage in fighting the trade war and President Trump’s high tariffs. China is also facing new trade barriers by the [European Union](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/business/european-union-china-electric-vehicle-tariffs.html) and developing countries ranging from Brazil and India to Turkey and Thailand.
Factories are now more automated in China than in the United States, Germany or Japan. China has more factory robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers than any other country except South Korea or Singapore, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
China’s automation drive has been guided by government directives and backed with huge investment. And as robots replace workers, automation positions China to continue to dominate mass production even as its labor force ages and becomes less willing to take industrial jobs.
He Liang, founder and chief executive of Yunmu Intelligent Manufacturing, one of China’s top producers of humanoid robots, said China was striving next to turn robotics into an entire new sector of business.
“The expectation for humanoid robots is to create another electric car industry,” he said. “So from this perspective, it is a national strategy.”
Meanwhile in the U.S.: debating if banning TikTok will fix manufacturing 🫠📉
50 years ago….
China: invests surplus from global trade into infrastructure and education. Intentionally disappears oligarchs who grow too large for their britches.
USA: let oligarchs pocket all the surplus, financialise the economy, take more and more purchasing power away from workers. Never build infrastructure, pour trillions into wars.
Now:
USA: their goods are so cheap, they must be competing unfairly, they are ripping us off because we don’t produce shit and buy from them, reeeeee.
The only one who are preparing a society post-automation it’s China.
Sure, but the US has…a demented old racist dictator with the mental capacity of a goldfish.
Checkmate, China!
China does not have “the edge” because the USA is by far the largest customer. In a trade war the customer has the power.
Our TechBros in America think progress and innovation can only come from themselves; their ‘enlightened’ worldview and ability to move/create (manipulate) markets.
Who knew investing in Infrastructure, Science, and People would be beneficial? Spoiler…everyone but the arrogant, greedy pricks that have bought our government, and their sychophantic simps.
And we, the Western nations, freely gave them the know-how for 20 years of cheap Chinese plastic trinkets!
China’s economy has fallen off a cliff. Tariffs are an existential threat to the existence of China in its current form. They are bad for the US also. It is like a race condition. Which country will implode first? That is anyone’s guess.
This is not as often noted, but the scalability of robots is a huge advantage. Not just increasing output, but also decreasing.
If there is an economic slowdown, you can unplug the robot for a day, a week, a year. There is no worker to layoff and no concern about keeping a ready workforce in case things pick up again.
On a national level it costs very little to deactivate factories of robots. But human workers present an ongoing expense to the government if they are laid off.