CHINA-INTERNAL: ROBOTICS

 Recent data released by the International Federation of Robotics observed that recent deployments of industrial robots in developing countries have been concentrated in China, and the country is expected to maintain its front-runner status. It said that 'in response to a shrinking working-age population and rising labour costs, which have eroded the country’s cheap-labour advantage, China has embarked on a government-backed robot-driven industrial strategy entitled “Made in China 2025”. Each year since 2013, China has bought more industrial robots than any other country and, by the end of 2016, is likely to overtake Japan as the world’s biggest operator of industrial robots. While its robot density – robots per industrial workers – continues to fall short of that of Germany, Japan and the Republic of Korea, the rapid pace of robot deployment is likely to significantly reduce the erosion of China’s comparative advantage in labour-intensive manufacturing. According to the International Organization for Standardization series of standards on robots and robotic devices – vocabulary, an industrial robot is an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications. China is also evolving as a major producer of industrial robots, given that its global rivals face higher costs and are less able to understand the needs of Chinese customers. Building on these advantages, the Government of China recently released a guideline envisaging a tripling of China’s annual production of industrial robots by 2020 (see http://www.china.org.cn/china/Off_the_Wire/2016-04/27/content_38337248.htm).







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