“Industrial” 517,000
Electronics 136,000
Automotive 121,000
All other 260,000
Specialized services 121,000
“Consumer” 19 million
* International Federation of Robotics, 11/22
Reporting from Guangzhou last November, Reuters finds Chinese workers losing interest in manufacturing work:
“More than 80% of Chinese manufacturers faced labor shortages ranging from hundreds to thousands of workers this year, equivalent to 10% to 30% of their workforce, a survey by CIIC Consulting showed. China’s Ministry of Education forecasts a shortage of nearly 30 million manufacturing workers by 2025.”
The article’s young blue-collar Chinese interlocutors now prefer additional education or finding jobs in services (and a startlingly large number, Reuters also says, are “adopting a minimal lifestyle known as ‘lying flat,’ doing just enough to get by and rejecting the rat race of China Inc.”) China’s factories seem, however, to be adapting – in part by trying to offer higher wages, but also by hiring metal and plastic stand-ins. The International Federation of Robotics’ annual snapshot of the robot universe, World Robotics 2022, reports that over half of last year’s 517,385 newly employed industrial robots last year went to work in China, and that Chinese factories are now more robot-heavy than America’s:
“Every other robot globally installed in 2021 ended up in China: Installations surged by 51% to 268,195 units.”
On a broader scale, IFR’s report divides the new-robot picture into three parts:
Industrial robots: Last year’s Chinese robot surge was unusually large, but also reflects a trend sustained over the past decade. China is now by far the world’s top industrial-robot employer, home to 1.22 million working factory robots, or over a third of the world’s 3.48 million total. A contributor to this is the shifting industry-sector balance of robot use: auto plants (especially in the U.S., Japan, Korea, and Germany) were the first and historically the largest employers of robots, but have been surpassed at least in raw numbers by the electronics industry.
By this total count, China is the world’s robot metropolis. A different perspective — the ratio of robots to human workers — finds neighboring Korea easily eclipsing even China’s mighty robot army. The Korean government reports exactly 1,000 robots for every 10,000 Korean factory workers, far ahead of second-place Singapore’s 670 robots per 10,000 factory workers. After them comes Japan at 399 and Germany at 397; China is sixth at 322; and Taiwan and the U.S. essentially tie for eighth at 276 and 274 respectively. (The world average is 141.) Japan, finally, is likely the industrial-robot production center; though this year’s report doesn’t have a figure, last year’s cited Japan as producing 45% of industrial robots.
Specialized services robots: Robot services professionals are fewer in numbers than their proletarian factory cousins — 121,000 new ones last year, about a quarter of the 517,000 new industrials — and (like the human “services sector”) are very diverse. The largest group, 49,500, went to work in logistics, carrying packages in warehouses and delivery centers, and moving industrial components through factories. Another 20,000 took “hospitality” jobs, such as ferrying food from kitchen to table in large restaurants* or greeting customers; 14,800 went to work in hospitals, clinics, or emergency medical services, 12,600 in industrial cleaning work, and about 8,000 in farms, dairy, and ranching. IFR’s report regrettably doesn’t have figures on the countries in which these high-skill robots are lighting up, but notes that (in some contrast to the industrial-robot world, where Japan is the largest producer and neighbors Korea and China the leading users), the U.S. is the largest services-robot manufacturer.
Homes: Finally, 19 million humble domestic robots went to work in homes, mainly for interior cleaning and vacuuming, but also for lawn-mowing.
* The Trade Fact series editor encountered two attentive and polite restaurant robots at a restaurant in Chiang Rai in the northern reaches of Thailand in February. Thai industrial-robot installation rose by 36% last year, to about 4,000.
Chinese workers not so interested in factory jobs.
… but no worries, here are the metal and plastic replacements. Global highlights from the International Federation of Robotics’ World Robotics 2021.
… and IFR’s closer looks at industrial and services robots.
The New York-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has a weekly new-robot video. Try the prototype seabed-cleaning jellyfish-robot.
… and also has a sentimental look back at Unimate, the first operating industrial robot (1961, GM plant, New Jersey).
Industry and research international:
Most roboticized country: The Korean Association of Robot Industry.
Largest producer: The Robotics Society of Japan.
This one may not pan out: Thai gourmets develop a robot for verifying ingredient-authenticity, aroma, and general tastiness of tom yam.
A 17-point robotics and application plan from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Singapore has a robot-police patrol dedicated to scolding people.
A few looks ahead, and one look back, from robot arts and lit:
Capek’s R.U.R. (1921) invented the word “robot,” and the classic “robot uprising” plot. The title acronym stands for a fictional “Rossum’s Universal Robots” company, with “Rossum” a slightly modified version of the Czech word for “reason,” and “robot” likewise an adapted term for “worker.” A Penn State robotics academic looks at R.U.R. a century later.
In robot-friendly Japan, by contrast, Astro-Boy (said to be the first anime character) is a helpful friend to humanity.
Stanislaw Lem’s “Mortal Engines” collection speculates about machine intelligence. In “The Hunt”, a well-meaning human pilot volunteers to destroy a supposedly mad robot; next, in “Mask,” a troubled, self-aware female robot-assassin tracks down a political dissident.
Philip K. Dick thought humans and robots would lose the ability to distinguish themselves from one another.
And Adrienne Mayer’s Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology takes the long look back, at visions of androids, flying cars, computers, and other semi-inventions in classical Greece, with comparators from India, Babylon, and the mechanical men of the Qin Dynasty court.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
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