E-Town, a hi-tech area in Beijing, is organizing a shopping festival for robots, where buyers can receive up to CNY250,000 in subsidies when purchasing robots from some of the country’s leading manufacturers of the advanced technology. The event, which runs through August 17, will cover products from leading Chinese brands such as Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics. The festival marks the launch of a new shop specializing in robot purchases and maintenance. Besides Unitree and UBTech, the shop will also feature Tien Kung, a humanoid machine from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, backed by UBTech and Xiaomi, and SenseRobot Go, a Go-playing robot from artificial intelligence giant SenseTime.
Corporate clients who purchase products worth CNY5 million at the shop would be eligible for a subsidy of CNY250,000. Individual buyers at the store can save CNY1,500 if the order is over CNY10,000. Online shoppers also qualify for discounts. JD.com, one of China’s largest online marketplaces, which is headquartered in E-Town, has launched a dedicated channel for the shopping festival, offering more than 680 robot models from 63 brands including EngineAI, whose PM01 performed the world’s first robot front-flip in February, and Limx Dynamics, backed by JD.com and Alibaba Group Holding. Consumers buying on JD.com can receive a CNY600 discount on orders worth more than CNY6,000. The starting discount of CNY50 applies to orders worth at least CNY500. The annual World Robot Conference is also being held in Beijing’s E-Town.
China has become a major hub for robot production. In the first half of the year, the country’s total output of industrial robots surged 36% to surpass 369,000 units, while production of service robots – used for tasks like delivery and cleaning – jumped 26% to 8.8 million units, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Some traditional tech companies have ventured into the burgeoning sector. Hikvision, a leading video surveillance supplier, was making “steady” progress in the spin-off and listing of its robotics unit, Hangzhou Hikrobot on ChiNext. The ChiNext board, which hosts smaller companies, accepted the listing application in 2023 but has since asked the firm several times to clarify certain issues. Hikvision’s robotics unit has become the biggest source of revenue for its noncore businesses, generating CNY3.1 billion in the first six months of 2025, accounting for 7.5% of the total, the South China Morning Post reports.
