From the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief, August 9:
Embodied Intelligence: The PRC’s Whole-of-Nation Push into Robotics
Executive Summary:
- Since 2015, Beijing has pursued a whole-of-nation strategy to dominate intelligent robotics, combining vertical integration, policy coordination, rapid deployment, and local experimentation. This approach has already achieved several of its core objectives.
- Policy documents articulate an official focus on core trends and technologies like humanoid robotics, sensors, actuators, and motion control. Local governments are also diversifying applications into fields ranging from eldercare to logistics and manufacturing.
- Massive state subsidies and loans underwrite these programs, with provinces and cities engaging in a de facto “subsidy race,” each vying to foster the next national robotics champion within their jurisdiction.
- “Industrial migration” is another emerging trend, in which a growing number of electric vehicle and tech giants are entering the humanoid robotics sector due to technological and supply chain overlaps. Their scale, engineering capacity, and vertical integration allow them to lower costs, accelerate R&D, and compete aggressively in a nascent industry.
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series analyzing the trajectory of the PRC’s robotics industry, from ecosystem formation to supply chain control to military implications. This first instalment maps previously undisclosed trends, drawing on recent policy papers, investment announcements, and discussions among industry players to decode the Beijing’s approach to this increasingly important sector.
Beijing is mounting a coordinated campaign to get ahead in next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) hardware through a nationwide surge in robotics. While companies in the West like Tesla and Boston Dynamics introduced physical AI to global audiences years ago, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now rapidly assembling an impressive array of competitors, marshalling industrial, academic, and financial resources to scale up its new national champions. The race is well underway.
At the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (世界人工智能大会) in Shanghai, the “National and Local Co-built Embodied Artificial Intelligence Robotics Innovation Center” (“HUMANOID”; 国家地方共建人形机器人创新中心) unveiled a new initiative to accelerate the development of humanoid robotics. It introduced fresh funding channels, training platforms, and national research hubs, all with the backing of central ministries and provincial governments (CCTV, July 28).
Across the country, similar announcements have proliferated in recent months. Since January, the central government has launched an $8.2 billion National AI Industry Investment Fund (国家级人工智能基金) to steer capital into frontier technologies, including the integration of AI into physical world. Meanwhile, local governments in Beijing, Shenzhen, and other regions have unveiled plans specifically targeting humanoid robotics (Baijiahao/Neutral Carbon Corporation Company, April 17).
First Steps: PRC’s Path to Robotics Dominance
Back in 2013, the PRC lagged behind global leaders such as Korea, Japan and Germany in robot density, even if it had become the world’s largest market for industrial robotics. Having assessed that robotics would be a key strategic industry in the future, the government began to lay the groundwork to engineer its industrial catch up.
Robotics was grouped alongside high-end computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools as one of 10 sectors highlighted in the Made in China 2025 policy, a landmark industrial strategy launched in 2015 to achieve global leadership in key emerging technologies. This policy, which anticipated many of the embodied AI ambitions now driving current PRC policy, divided robotics into three domains: industrial robots for manufacturing, service robots for human-centric environments, and special-purpose robots for hazardous or military use. (MIIT Equipment Industry Development Center, May 12, 2016). To execute the goals set in the Made in China 2025 plan, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) published the Robot Industry Development Plan (2016–2020) (机器人产业发展规划2016-2020年). This plan highlighted structural weaknesses, such as reliance on foreign core components like servo motors and control systems, and advocated for greater self-sufficiency in response (NDRC, April 27, 2016). Importantly, these calls predated the United States’s imposition of export controls during the first Trump administration.
In 2021, the 14th Five-Year Plan and its related sub-strategies further prioritized robotics, outlining specific goals in intelligent manufacturing, smart mobile robots, and cleanroom automation (using robotics within controlled environments to minimize human intervention). At the end of that year, the government released the 14th Five-Year Robotics Industry Plan (“十四五”机器人产业发展规划), which set an additional goal of becoming a global robotics leader by 2025, with an annual industry growth rate exceeding 20 percent (MIIT, December 28, 2021)....
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