https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/opinion/china-america-manufacturing-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OlA.kZvF.al48IzHLJRUO&smid=url-share excerpts: Tesla’s factory in Shanghai produces far more cars per worker than its plant in California. The gap reflects something unsettling about China’s broader edge in manufacturing: It has figured out how to organize production around large-scale deployment of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence. The United States has not.
Around the world, modern manufacturing no longer resembles the mid-20th-century factory floor. Robotics, automation and A.I. now make it possible to produce more with fewer human workers, though those who remain are more skilled and better paid. Unlike China, America has failed to reckon with this reality and organize manufacturing in ways that turn its own technological strengths into comparable gains. Washington talks about A.I. as if it lives in research labs, venture capital portfolios and data centers. China treats it as factory work. Today, A.I. is embedded into China’s efforts to accelerate automation — guiding machines, scheduling work and detecting problems in real time. China has built more than 30,000 smart factories. More than half of all new industrial robots installed worldwide in 2024 went into Chinese factories. Research from Weijian Shan, an investor and economist based in Hong Kong, has found that, from sectors ranging from steel to shipbuilding, these factories now produce more per worker than comparable U.S. plants. | | | | | | | | | | | Unraveling China’s Productivity Paradox - Gavekal Research | | | | | | | | | | | | | | World Robotics 2025 report – INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS – released by IFR The new World Robotics 2025 statistics on industrial robots showed 542,000 robots installed in 2024 - more than ... | | | China has more factory robots than the rest of the world combined. The shift is visible on the shop floor. By last year, the Chinese electric vehicle company Zeekr had over 800 robots in its factory in Ningbo. The company even experimented with putting humanoid robots to work on its factory floor lifting boxes, assembling components and performing quality checks. Rather than following fixed instructions, the robots use cameras, sensors and A.I. to respond to conditions on the line, much like driver-assistance systems that adjust to traffic. That flexibility can allow them to handle variation, work safely alongside human workers and absorb routine changes that would otherwise force production to stop. These are the kind of efficiency gains that can eventually increase productivity per worker and help ease shortages of skilled labor. | | | | | | | | | | | Humanoid robots poised to transform China's factory floor Humanoid robots poised to transform China's factory floor- | | | Michael Novick 323-636-7388https://www.antiracist.org http://www.change-links.org CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The contents of this email message and any attachments are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information and may be legally protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient of this message or their agent, or if this message has been addressed to you in error, please immediately alert the sender by reply email and then delete this message and any attachments. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, copying, or storage of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40822): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40822 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117982504/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
