The New Year’s television gala in China It is the most watched and most criticized program in the world. It is as obligatory to watch it during dinner as it is to regret another dull chain of theatrical, musical and supposedly humorous numbers the next day. This year, however, the excitement overflowed the social networks: los androids had dulled the mold and the pedestrian propaganda china.
dozens of robots they executed complex choreographies of kung fu and dance with the forcefulness of Bruce Lee and Nureyev’s harmony. They lavished themselves with jumps, aerial somersaults and other capers, brandishing katanas and nunchucks, always agile and harmonious like humans. They serve the thin and the thick: other robots showed domestic skills such as folding shirts. And in a trick of realism, an old woman controlled a robot so similar to her that it confused her family and audience.
Robots burst into the gala twenty years ago and have rarely been absent. Last year they also danced and waved with red scarves. Seen today, they provoke tenderness. The contrast between the performances has gone viral on the networks as a corollary of the great leap forward in the robotics. In recent years, China has organized robot fights or made them race marathons together with humans. The advances are spectacular but the judgments are lenient with stumbles and falls. Not this time: what has been seen pushes us to wonder not about future limits but about present ones. “The humanoids “Chinese have officially gone from laboratory prototypes to occupy the center of the global stage,” certified the national press.
Sales skyrocketed
The weather has triggered the demand. Searches about androids on the websites of digital commerce They increased 300% in the first two hours of the gala, with similar interest in large cities and rural provinces. Before it ended, the robots participating in the famous JD platform had sold out, according to the official media. Global Times. In other editions an unknown artist was pushed to stardom, in this one local startups became popular MagicLab, Noetix, Galbot y Unitree.
The space racelos dronesthe artificial intelligencerobots… The gala has served as a national technological showcase and declaration of intent for four decades. Robotics has entered a new era and the most relevant thing is happening in China. The 2021 five-year plan provided for a 20% annual increase in robots, the initiative Made in China 2025 identified robotics as one of the ten strategic sectors of the new economy and the plan Robot+ pointed out a hundred applications priority in agriculture, construction, mining or health. The agenda serves as a thermometer Xi JinpingChinese president: in the last year he met with four founders of companies of electric vehicleswith four others of semiconductors and with five of robotics.
Robots participate in the celebration of the new year in China. / Associated Press / LaPresse
Economic opportunity
To fuel the revolution he has allocated Beijing generous subsidies and favored the opening of factories near the centers of investigation. China only sees advantages. They increase the productivityencourage research in a strategic sector and, after decades of sustained salary increases, slow down the relocation. They will also alleviate the economic damage of the demographic crisis. China suffers a tenacious aging that irremediably cuts the workforce and the projections are catastrophic: in the next decade some 300 million Chinese who are now between 50 and 60 years old, the largest social sector, will have retired without the declining birth rate being able to replace them.
China and USA global leadership is discussed in IA. In robotics, however, Chinese dominance is intimidating. Half of the world’s robots were installed in China last year, according to the International Federation of Robotics, and it is the origin of 90% of the 13,000 sold worldwide. USA it barely has 13%. The industry lives in frenzy. The chief executive of Unitree, one of the companies at the gala, will increase its current production of 5,500 robots per year to 20,000. Morgan Stanley It estimates that sales of Chinese androids will double this year and reach 28,000 units. The road to home, however, is long: mundane acts such as serving coffee are more difficult than choreographed jumps.
The assumption of American defeat is its denunciations of the subsidy policy in China that, when the time comes, will pave the way for the duty. It already happened with electric vehicles. The battle is ready again: facing the Chinese advance guard is the humanoid Optimus of Tesla. Years ago I disdained Elon Musk with laughter at Chinese electric cars as rivals and in 2025 the manufacturer BYD outsold Tesla. Lesson learned, he recently pointed out Chinese robots as his greatest threat. “People underestimate China, but China is powerful on another level,” he said.
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