China Plans To Build a Domestic Robotics Industry

jfruh writes China is known as a manufacturing export powerhouse, but it imports much of one particularly important kind of manufacturing tool: robots. Now the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is developing a "robotics technology roadmap," with a goal of owning over 45 percent of the high-end robotics market by 2020.

Comments

On the Fence

[DumbSwede]

I’m on the fence about this one. It reminds me of Japan’s big fifth generation computer project in the 80’s – and which was widely considered a failure. China has had many great accomplishments this last two decades, they are a force to be reckoned with, but many of their gains have come through brute force methods of applying ample labor to problems, not true subtlety or production efficiencies.

That said, the Chinese admire those who excel academically and are hungry for a prosperous modern future. I have actually been to China 5 times in the last eight years and the major cities are modern marvels to behold.

But what has worked well in the past, the ruling party deciding spending priorities, may not work so well in the future. China’s bureaucrats are very controlling. They have worked hard the last twenty years to drag China into the modern world, enriching their citizens and themselves alike, but now that a substantial portion of the population is educated and middle class they have become more restless and demanding of accountability on the part of the government.

This desire for control may also not work so well in an industry that needs the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. You can command the building of streets and bridges and skyscrapers, commanding new discoveries be made and made in such a way that are not a threat to the state and can be controlled by the state – that may be another thing.