In China s manufacturing front line, automation and it (Information Technology) have begun to expand due to labor shortage and rising labor costs. In the high-tech industry cultivation policy "made in China 2025", the Chinese government encourages enterprises to introduce robots in factories, promote industrial upgrading, and actively improve the domestic ratio of robots. In China, the demand for machine tools is declining, but in the long run, the market is expected to expand. However, the core parts are made in Japan, and the promotion of localization still faces great obstacles.
In China, which has become the "world factory" with the help of low wage and abundant labor force, labor shortage and rising labor costs have intensified in recent years, and industrial upgrading has become an urgent topic. The goal put forward by the government in "made in China 2025" is to popularize intelligent manufacturing using robots and it, and increase the domestic market share of industrial robots from more than 30% in 2017 to 70% in 2025.  
According to the statistics of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), China surpassed Japan to become the first industrial robot market in the world in 2013. Now the market scale accounts for more than 30% of the world. Especially in the factories of high value-added products such as automobiles and electronic products.
Due to the economic downturn caused by Sino US trade friction, there is a trend of delaying investment. However, the number of robots per 10000 workers in China is 1 / 3 of that in Japan. In the long run, the market is expected to expand further.


"The per capita production efficiency has reached 2.6 times in five years," said Huang Gang, CEO of Shanghai Cambridge Technology, which manufactures communication equipment such as routers. The automation of the plant was started in 2011. A large number of sensors and cameras are installed on the completely unmanned production line, which is about 80 meters long and looks like a human arm and can complete complex movements. For the smooth transmission of products, the automatic control system was introduced, forming a system that can deal with the shortage of labor force.
According to the statistics of Rui industry (MIR), a Chinese research company of industrial supplies, the investment scale of Intelligent Manufacturing in 2018 increased by 46% over the previous year, reaching 69.6 billion yuan. The number of subsidized projects was 100 as in the previous year, but even without government support, more than 1000 cases of promoting intelligent manufacturing doubled as in the previous year.
With regard to the manufacturers of industrial robots and machine tools used in the manufacturing line, Japanese and European enterprises have a prominent sense of existence. Rui industrial statistics show that in the Chinese market, foreign capital such as FANUC, Yaskawa electric and ABB in Switzerland (excluding German KUKA under Chinese enterprises) account for more than 60% of the share.
In China, there are many local enterprises that only assemble foreign parts, but the authorities have continuously launched supportive policies and cultivated a number of emerging enterprises in the past 10 years. A representative case is Xinsong Robot Automation Co., Ltd., with the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the matrix, which has developed a high safety cooperative robot with people sharing work nearby. Professor ichihiro kokan of the Graduate School of Tohoku University, who is familiar with industrial robot technology, believes that "the performance is comparable to that of Japanese and European enterprises".
In addition, there are also enterprises that supply low-cost domestic products to small and medium-sized factories. In the field of metal welding robots, Huanyan automation equipment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., established in 2014, has the largest supply as a domestic enterprise. Shi Hongwei, vice president of the company, said confidently that the sales price of each robot is less than half that of foreign-funded enterprises. In order to reduce costs, independent production was launched in some parts in 2019.
In the field of machine tools, new faces are also emerging. In the context of the deterioration of the operation of the two large state-owned enterprises, there are also rising enterprises. One of them, Baoji Machine Tool Group has developed a five axis machine tool that can complete complex processing, and foreign-funded enterprises have always had advantages in this field. The person in charge of the company stressed that foreign investment has advantages in technology, but it has advantages in price.
However, although industrial robots are the focus of government policy, a small number of enterprises receive subsidies and master technologies that can compete with foreign capital. Some experts believe that "there are about 30 local industrial robot enterprises in China that can compete with foreign-funded enterprises to a certain extent".
  
The subject is the lack of manufacturing technology of core components such as encoder that senses the position of manipulator and reducer embedded in robot joint, and the experience of allowing multiple robots to cooperate. In the government s plan, a bold target was put forward for core parts, saying that the domestic ratio, which is now only about 20%, would be increased to 70%.
  
Lin Guangshu, director of Rui industry, believes that the technical barriers are still very high. Although the expansion of the market will increase the supply of local enterprises, the sense of presence of foreign-funded enterprises with advantages in the field of second-hand industrial robots that need advanced technology and face automobile and electronic products is still prominent. Even by 2025, the market share of China s domestic industrial robots will only increase slightly compared with now.