China sounds alarm as a swarm of copy-cat humanoid robots threatens to crash the industry

China’s economic planning agency has warned that the overwhelming production of highly similar humanoid robots may collapse the industry. It now plans to encourage consolidation and technology-sharing and focus resources on research and development.

Humanoid robotics is one of the industries China sees as a major driver of future economic growth, but officials are now concerned that the market is becoming overcrowded, with more than 150 firms now producing human-like robots, causing authorities to raise an alarm about how many of them are highly similar to each other.

China warns against ‘copy-cat’ robots

At a press briefing on November 27, Li Chao, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said that there are now more than 150 firms in China producing humanoid robots and many are churning out products that are “highly similar.” 

The concern here is that a large number of near-identical humanoid robot models could swarm the market, restrict true innovation, and consume capital that should go into research and development (R&D). The NDRC said that the industry is now at risk of becoming overrun with clones chasing short-term investor hype. 

The government has promised to speed up efforts to create clearer rules for market entry and exit. It also intends to encourage robot makers to merge and work together. They can share technology and industrial resources across companies. 

Institutional demand for robots on the rise

Companies such as UBTech have scaled up production of their humanoid robot models dramatically. According to the South China Morning Post, UBTech plans to expand its humanoid robot output tenfold in 2026, and production costs are shrinking by roughly 20% per year thanks to economies of scale. 

UBTech recently launched its “Walker S2” industrial humanoid and says it has secured orders worth more than 800 million yuan (about $112 million) this year.  Meanwhile, sales across the entire industry are projected to pass 10,000 humanoid units in 2025. 

Chinese analysts attribute much of the growth within the industry to favorable government policy. This year, for the first time, China’s government work report included “embodied AI”, which refers to robots and AI systems that physically interact with the world. 

According to reports, China has been responsible for more than half of the world’s new industrial robots since 2021. Its “robot density,” the number of robots per 10,000 employees, rose from 97 in 2017 to 470 in 2023, a nearly fourfold increase. 

Still, despite the hype and investment, the use of humanoid robots has not been widely adopted, especially in everyday settings like households. 

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