In China, the stock of industrial robots has grown from 256,000 units in 2015 to 2,027,000 in 2024—nearly eight times more. This surge masks a structural fragility: a significant portion of speed reducers comes from Germany and Japan, and dependence on these imports exposes the supply chain to delays and the risk of disruption.
In 2024, China accounted for 54% of global robot installations, and Chinese suppliers held 57% of their domestic market. Dominating volume is not enough when a precision component represents a large share of a machine’s total cost and remains beyond industrial reach.
The essentials
- China’s robot stock reached 2,027,000 units in 2024 versus 256,000 in 2015—approximately 25.8% compound annual growth (International Federation of Robotics, World Robotics 2024).
- A significant portion of speed reducers—one of the critical components of an industrial robot alongside servomotors, controllers, sensors and end-effectors—is imported from Germany and Japan.
- A speed reducer accounts for a substantial share of a robot’s total cost; dependence on imported reducers exposes the supply chain to delays and the risk of disruption.
- In 2024, China accounted for 54% of global industrial robot installations, compared to roughly 27% in 2015, but this volume dominance coexists with acknowledged gaps in critical components and high-end offerings.
- The challenge by 2035: transform mass assembly capacity into sovereignty over precision components—a challenge comparable to semiconductors.
Five times more robots, the same dependence
The growth is spectacular in its numbers. From 256,000 units in 2015 to 2,027,000 in 2024, China’s stock has advanced at roughly 25.8% per year on average, compounded. No other country has deployed industrial automation at this scale and speed.
This surge responds to clear logic. Chinese manufacturing wages tripled between 2010 and 2020. Companies substituted capital for labor, with massive public support: subsidies for robot purchases, tax credits for smart factories, dedicated regional funds. Shenzhen, Shanghai and Chongqing transformed their industrial zones into showcases of automation.
The results on markets are measurable. According to the IFR, Chinese suppliers reached 57% of the Chinese market in 2024, though no equivalent IFR data exists for their combined global share. In 2015, China accounted for roughly 26% of global industrial robot installations. Today, Chinese robots equip factories in Vietnam, Mexico, and Eastern Europe.
But behind these figures, the production structure reveals a blind spot. Assembling a robot requires mastery of several critical components: servomotors, controllers, speed reducers, sensors and end-effectors. For the first two, China has made progress. For the third, it remains massively dependent on foreign suppliers.
The speed reducer, the key part China cannot yet manufacture
A speed reducer—known in English as a harmonic drive or RV reducer—is one of the components that converts the rapid rotation of a motor into slow, precise movement of a robot arm. Without it, an industrial robot cannot perform gestures repeatable to a tenth of a millimeter. This level of precision is what enables welding a car body, placing an electronic component, or assembling a screen.
Nabtesco and Harmonic Drive are established Japanese manufacturers of precision reducers. These companies, often founded fifty to sixty years ago, have accumulated metallurgical expertise that patents capture only imperfectly. The precision of a reducer depends on the quality of alloys, heat treatments, machining tolerances—parameters refined over decades of production, not in a cycle of industrial catch-up.
China imports a significant portion of its reducers. This figure says something precise: Chinese companies know how to design robot architecture, integrate subsystems, commercialize the final product. Chinese reducers still present, for certain demanding applications, lasting gaps in precision and reliability compared to imported products. Several attempts at local manufacturing have yielded limited results in long-term reliability.
The cost of this dependence cuts two ways. Financially: a significant share of a robot’s cost of goods goes to a foreign supplier, which caps the margins of Chinese assemblers. Geopolitically: an embargo or targeted export restriction on precision reducers exposes production to delays and disruptions. Buffer stocks exist, but their coverage duration remains limited.
A vulnerability resembling that of chips
This pattern is familiar. China has invested $200 billion trying to catch up with TSMC in semiconductors, with an estimated gap of twenty to thirty years on the most advanced nodes. In robotics, the structure of dependence is analogous: dominance downstream (assembly, commercialization, deployment), vulnerability upstream (precision components).
The difference lies in political visibility. Semiconductors have been at the center of geopolitical debate since 2020, with controls targeting SMIC in 2020 and broad controls on certain advanced lithography equipment dating from 2022. Robotic reducers are not subject to a comparable public regulatory regime to that of advanced semiconductors, but certain reducers may be affected by targeted controls or sanctions. Germany and Japan have not yet applied to these components regulatory regimes comparable to those of advanced semiconductors.
But the logic of chokepoints—bottlenecks where one actor can exercise a veto—applies with equal rigor. Edward Fishman, in his work on economic weapons, describes how power does not reside in size but in position within a network of dependence. Suppliers of German reducers occupy a strategic position in China’s robotic value chain.
Sino-American tension has already produced precedents. In 2019, restrictions on Huawei showed that decades of integration in global supply chains could rapidly reverse into vulnerability. Beijing drew an explicit lesson: technological autonomy is a matter of national security.
Beijing’s strategy to reduce this dependence
The Chinese response follows the usual pattern: identifying the gap, mobilizing public and private capital, setting numerical targets in five-year plans, pressing state enterprises to favor local suppliers.
Made in China 2025 listed robots as a priority sector as early as 2015. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) strengthened commitments on precision manufacturing, with special funds for critical components. Tax incentives favor integrators that increase their local procurement rate.
On the ground, several companies are making progress. Leaderdrive and Shuanghuan Transmission are improving their manufacturing processes. Partnerships with technical universities, notably Harbin Institute of Technology and Zhejiang University, are accelerating research into materials and tolerances. The Robotics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences coordinates technology transfer programs.
Results remain limited. The reliability of local reducers over long production runs still shows gaps compared to Japanese and German supplier standards. Chinese robot manufacturers continue to source from abroad for certain critical applications, notably in automotive and precision electronics. Local components are more present in certain segments but are not confined to less critical tasks alone.
This situation creates interesting dynamics for German and Japanese suppliers. Their Chinese order books are growing with the expansion of the robot fleet. They finance their own R&D investments on this basis, which widens the technological gap at the very moment China is trying to close it.
By 2035: three possible trajectories toward robotic sovereignty
The fundamental question is the speed at which China can close this gap. Three trajectories merit examination, though no source today allows any to be designated as certain.
The first trajectory would be gradual catch-up through industrial experience accumulation. Chinese manufacturers improve their processes over ten to fifteen years as technical teams accumulate production cycles. This is how China caught up in sectors like wind turbines or solar panels—industries where the learning curve plays a decisive role. If this scenario holds, signals to watch would be rising reliability of local reducers in automotive and electronics, and a measurable reduction in the import share of total robot costs.
The second trajectory would be persistent structural dependence, analogous to what China maintains in semiconductors despite decades of investment. Precision reducers demand metallurgical expertise and quality cultures that resist simple capital transfer. If the technological gap with Nabtesco and Harmonic Drive remains stable, China would continue assembling at volume but depend on upstream suppliers for critical applications. This scenario would be geopolitically uncomfortable but economically tolerable as long as no export restrictions materialize.
The third, more disruptive trajectory would see emergence of a workaround approach through design. Rather than reproducing the Japanese harmonic reducer, Chinese engineers might develop robotic architectures less dependent on this component, relying more on direct electric actuators, composite materials, or more sophisticated control systems compensating for lower mechanical precision. This technological gamble is documented in several Chinese university projects, though their industrial results are not yet established.
Geopolitical context weighs directly on prospects for the next five years. Technological competition among major powers is reshaping supply chains in sectors previously deemed low-sensitivity. Speed reducers were not at the center of strategic discussions five years ago. They could be by 2030 if Sino-American tension extends to advanced manufacturing technologies and Europe must arbitrate between its industrial exports and alliance commitments.
Chinese robotics as an indicator of modern industrial power
The history of Chinese industrial robots illustrates a broader principle: mass production capacity and technological sovereignty are two distinct things. One can dominate a market downstream without controlling the conditions of one’s own production.
AI is transforming work in Asia-Pacific with a speed that makes robotic automation even more urgent—the two dynamics reinforce each other. Countries like Vietnam or Indonesia, which receive factory transfers from China, find themselves likewise exposed to this question: which components do the robots being installed there depend on, and who controls them?
For China, robotics is a test of industrial maturity in the most precise sense. Manufacturing two million robots is a logistical and financial achievement. Manufacturing the reducers that make them function with required reliability is a problem of materials physics, metrology, and accumulated industrial culture. These two competencies do not develop at the same pace nor with the same instruments.
Germany and Japan, for their part, hold a position their economic size does not predict. Their speed reducer manufacturers occupy a strategic position in China’s industrial robot value chain.
The question opening before us is when this asymmetry will become politically visible. Export controls are negotiated, alliances are redrawn, and German family businesses specializing in precision mechanics could find themselves, without having sought it, at the center of geopolitical arbitrations that exceed them.
Sources
- International Federation of Robotics, World Robotics 2024
- Nikkei Asia, China’s robot boom masks reliance on foreign precision parts, 2024
- Caixin Global, China’s Industrial Robot Market: Local Brands Gain Share but Key Components Remain Imported, 2024
