Robot nation: China’s bid to beat its demographic decline
The country’s workforce is set to fall to 300 million by the end of the century. Beijing wants humanoids to narrow the labour gap.
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An X Square robot carrying a bottle to a rubbish bin as a housekeeper cleans the floor at a customer’s home in Beijing.
PHOTO : AFP
Joe Leahy, Tina Hu, William Langley and Shihuan Chen
In the workshops of the Sany truck plant in central China, the whirr of robots pressing and spraying vehicle panels has virtually replaced the chatter of humans.
The company is also trying to automate the final and most labour-intensive assembly phase, using humanoids – the frontier of robotics – in anticipation of labour shortages when China’s population ages.
