Beijing has increasingly backed the space, with government departments promoting their development. In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guidelines for the space, calling for "production at scale" by 2025.
According to Ming Hsun Lee, head of Greater China automotive and industrials research at BofA Global Research, China sees humanoid robots as an important industry because of their potential to mitigate looming labor shortages.
"I think in the short-term, three to four years, we will see humanoid robots initially applied in production lines to compare some workers, and in the midterm, we will see them gradually spread into the service industry," he said.