On Thursday, three Bloomberg journalists based in Beijing reported on a seemingly routine government announcement from China’s economic central planning department, the National Development and Reform Commission (it has no American counterpart, so don’t ask): The commission has noticed a pattern of dozens of Chinese companies turning out humanoid robots that do basically nothing, and doing it in pretty much the same way.
Agency spokesperson Li Chao, Bloomberg said, expressed concern that this wave of robots threatens to take smart people away from real, valuable research.
It appears China is paying attention to what you’ve probably already seen: news about cute Chinese robots walking great distances, competing in sports, and inadequate publicity about China’s incredibly vast army of factory worker robots.
China’s version of this trend apparently started when the country saw a spectacular dance performance by a squadron of Unity bots at the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, a Chinese New Year broadcast that is the most-watched TV program in the world.
“Frontier industries have long grappled with the challenge of balancing the pace of growth against the risk of a bubble – an issue now facing the humanoid robot sector as well,” Bloomberg’s Lee was quoted as saying. It’s like an indirect declaration that the state feels that if you’re making these things in China you’re potentially endangering stability.
For example, bike-sharing apps created an economic bubble in China. There were dozens of apps that did the same thing. Then that bubble catastrophically burst, leading to embarrassing photos of bike graveyards that will forever serve as an example of economic speculation gone mad.
And China is famous for putting its tech billionaires behind bars — each arrest serving as a potential object lesson for any humanoid robot company CEOs thinking about violating what the Chinese government now says it wants to see: fewer robo-firms.
Bloomberg summarized what Li said would be notable next steps: The government will expand R&D on one hand, and build a national infrastructure for testing and training robots, efforts clearly aimed at bringing some much-needed diversity to the sector. But it would also apparently create formal rules for robots entering and exiting the market, apparently to reduce non-creative knock-offs.
So Chinese robots are not going away. But if your product is in the video below, maybe you should pay attention to yourself.
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