China's Robotics Industry 2026

A factory floor in Shenzhen now looks less like a display booth and more like a rehearsal room for industrial labor. Humanoid robots repeat gestures, wait for new tasks, and move through pilot sites where the old boundary between software and machinery is being redrawn. This book follows China's robotics industry from the humanoid mass-production race to real-world deployment. It covers Unitree, AgiBot, UBTECH, the embodied-AI path, robot-training data, harmonic reducers, roller screws, RV reducers, state-backed cluster funds, IPO routes, U.S. export controls, critical minerals, and Korea's position in the middle of the U.S.-China technology contest. The point is not to treat robots as a distant future. By 2026 they have become an industrial policy, a supply-chain weapon, a capital-market story, and a test of whether Korea can turn its robot density into actual industrial power.