As China's population is aging fast, some companies are developing robots to help in taking care of elderly persons. Zhang Yongwen, CEO of robot manufacturer Fairyon Humanoid Tech, sees the company’s future mainly in the homes of elderly people – offering them much-needed assistance and companionship. “We’re developing a new type of robot that can make facial expressions that closely resemble humans, such as smiling and blinking,” he said, speaking at last month’s China (Shanghai) International Technology Fair, where his robot turned heads. Established early this year in Shanghai, Zhang’s company is among the humanoid robot developers that have multiplied in China in recent years as the country has set its sights on technological innovations and high-end manufacturing amid an intensifying trade and tech rivalry with the United States. Human-like robots, which can be highly versatile and can respond to human emotions, are expected to plug the gap in elderly care as Chinese society rapidly ages and its workforce shrinks.
The humanoid robot sector in China entered a period of “explosive growth” last year with an industry size of CNY3.91 billion, or 85.7% larger than a year earlier, according to a report in April by the China Center for Information Industry Development. Globally, the market for artificial beings will see an average growth rate of 70% per year through 2035, leading to a global market size of USD38 billion, according to a Goldman Sachs research note in January. Carmaker Tesla could start selling its high-profile humanoid robot, Optimus, which is still in development, by the end of next year. Zhang, the Shanghai CEO, said: “As China’s population aging deepens, robots are taking up a big amount of labor left by a smaller workforce and are becoming an important driver of new economic growth.” China’s population fell by 2.08 million in 2023 to 1.4097 billion, a year after reporting the nation’s first population decrease in six decades, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The proportion of those aged 65 and above also rose from 9.7% in 2013 to 15.4% in 2023.
As labor costs rise in a greying society, humanoid robots, which can be efficient helpers in workplaces and at home, are also helping businesses cut costs and produce more standardized goods, said Qiu Yufeng, Co-founder of Hangzhou-based robot company Zopia Robot. “Though we’re a global leader in the application of industrial robots, these machines are still unable to do a lot of work like humans do, such as telling products apart by their size, shape and rigidity,” he said. “Because most of the tools we use are designed based on human characteristics, the most convenient way to replace human labor is to create humanlike robots,” he explained.
The artificial intelligence (AI) craze has been a “major breakthrough” in robotics, as embedding the technology makes them more similar to humans and able to work in different scenarios and various fields, he added. In comparison, traditional robots are mostly task-specific – a welding robot can only weld, and a stacking bot can merely pile up products. In 2022, China installed 290,258 industrial robots, accounting for more than half of the 553,052 industrial robots in factories worldwide, according to the International Federation of Robotics. The mass production of robots boasting AI brains and humanlike bodies is a goal that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) vowed to realize by 2025. Calling them as “disruptive” as electric cars, smartphones and personal computers, the Ministry also pledged that by 2027, China will have reached an advanced level in terms of its overall capacity to make robots, the South China Morning Post reports.
