{"id":476430,"date":"2026-02-15T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476430\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T12:00:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T12:00:23","slug":"china-has-another-solution-to-its-shrinking-population-robots-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476430\/","title":{"rendered":"China has another solution to its shrinking population: robots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beijing
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n China\u2019s<\/a> birth rate has hit a historic low \u2013 deepening fears of a major economic shock in the decades to come as the country\u2019s massive labor force dwindles and its population of pension-drawing retirees swells.\n <\/p>\n

\n A flurry of policies from Chinese authorities to spur procreation \u2013 from cash handouts and tax breaks to new rules making marriage easier \u2013 has so far failed to stop the downward slide, data released last month shows.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n But the country is also eyeing another potential fix: robots and automation.\n <\/p>\n

\n Chinese leader Xi Jinping has for years overseen a push to upgrade and automate the country\u2019s manufacturing sector, part of Beijing\u2019s goal to transform China into a self-sufficient high-tech powerhouse.\n <\/p>\n

\n That push is now converging with Beijing\u2019s rush to address the rebalancing of its population, which, if unaddressed, threatens to break the pension system, drive up families\u2019 health care costs and crush productivity \u2013 dragging down faith in public institutions and economic output in one swoop.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf (China) just carries on exactly the same as it has been in the last 20 or 30 years, then it\u2019s going to be a massive crisis, because of the mismatch between their population system and their economic system \u2013 but why would they do that?\u201d said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demography expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n If handled well, experts say, China\u2019s push into automation and AI \u2013 alongside other adaptations \u2013 could go a long way to help stop economic growth from falling off a demographic cliff \u2013 at least for decades to come.\n <\/p>\n

\n But managing a high-tech transition \u2013 one that would cost people jobs in the short term and change the nature of work in the long term \u2013 is a steep challenge for governments around the world. Let alone in a country of 1.4 billion people that built decades of growth on the back of its expansive workforce.\n <\/p>\n

\n And the stakes are particularly high for a ruling Communist Party that has pegged its legitimacy to economic stability and aims to make China a \u201cmid-level developed country\u201d within the next decade.\n <\/p>\n

\n How Beijing prepares now will have long-term implications for the global economy and on generations to come, experts say, and that\u2019s not just about trying to arrest falling birth rates.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf China can achieve sustained gains in labor productivity through robots, digitalization and AI, then it can maintain \u2013 or increase \u2013 industrial output with fewer workers on the factory floor,\u201d said Guojun He, an economics professor at the University of Hong Kong.\n <\/p>\n

\n That means \u201cautomation can significantly mitigate, but not completely neutralize, the economic impact of a shrinking workforce, especially in industrial production.\u201d But those impacts will be different across industries \u2013 and require a \u201ccombination of policies\u201d from education to social security to land well, he added.\n <\/p>\n

\n China is already by far the world\u2019s largest industrial robot market and home to more than half of all robots installed worldwide in 2024, according<\/a> to the International Federation of Robotics.\n <\/p>\n

\n Across the country, robotic arms work in concert to weld, paint and assemble goods in highly automated lines, or even in \u201cdark\u201d factories, where there\u2019s no need to waste electricity keeping on the lights for human eyes.\n <\/p>\n

\n High levels of automation are what\u2019s enabling Chinese factories to pump out cutting-edge electric vehicles and solar panels at large scale and low prices \u2013 driving their soaring trade surplus with the rest of the world.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Beijing is also betting heavily on humanoid robots, with more than 140 companies in China now developing them in a field flush with government subsidies.\n <\/p>\n

\n So far, these humanoids are most visible as showpieces of China\u2019s tech ambitions, dancing in formation on televised specials and duking it out at promotional boxing matches.\n <\/p>\n

\n But some have already been piloted on assembly lines, in logistics hubs and in science labs. Their developers say they are still a ways off, but getting closer to matching human productivity in tasks like handling, sorting, and quality inspection.\n <\/p>\n

\n All this is part of a top-down push to ensure China keeps its competitive advantage in a new era of high tech and rising labor costs, outlined in the government\u2019s \u201cMade in China 2025\u201d plan released in 2015 \u2013 the same year Beijing decided to scrap its controversial, decades-long \u201cone-child\u201d population control regime.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n While the looming population crunch may not have been the driving force behind the industrial policy, voices within China have framed automation, robotics and AI as tools to mitigate its harms.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cSince the population numbers are starting to turn against China, this idea of automation, and now AI \u2026 has become part of the script of \u2026 \u2018We\u2019re going to have all this productivity increase and therefore (population decline) won\u2019t matter,\u2019\u201d said Bert Hofman, a professor at the East Asian Institute at the National University Singapore and former World Bank country director for China.\n <\/p>\n

\n That official vision includes robots not just as factory workers, but as caregivers to the burgeoning population of adults over 60, who now make up 23% of the population but could account for more than half by 2100, per United Nations projections.\n <\/p>\n

\n The urgent need to expand systems to care for those aging adults is compounded by the legacy of the \u201cone-child\u201d policy, which created a generation of only children who will care for parents without siblings to share the burden.\n <\/p>\n

\n Recent government guidelines have called for advancing humanoid robots and AI technologies to enhance elder care, as well as developing brain-computer interfaces, exoskeleton robots and muscle suits to assist elderly citizens with declining physical functions.\n <\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

\n State media regularly highlights ambitions of rolling out humanoid robots to help older adults with around-the-clock caregiving \u2013 perhaps a bid to make more people open to the idea.\n <\/p>\n

\n Another concern is the state-backed pension system, which many elderly Chinese rely on and predictions suggest could move into deficit as the population ages without more reform.\n <\/p>\n

\n Here too, the \u201crace between technology advancement and population aging,\u201d could have a bearing, according to Tianzeng Xu, a China analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit.\n <\/p>\n

\n If tech progress can significantly boost labor productivity then, in theory, each worker would be able to contribute more to the system even when there are more retirees to support, Xu said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cProvided the former outpaces the latter by certain margins, the improvement of labor productivity is still possible to keep our pension system afloat.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But it\u2019s uncertain how exactly all that will play out, not just for a strained pension system, but the economy at large \u2013 especially in the latter half of the century when the demographic decline deepens considerably.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn this race between population decline and productivity increase, China (stays) well ahead until the 2070s when labor force decline is going to be more rapid than productivity increase,\u201d said Hofman, citing projections based on OECD long-term scenarios.\n <\/p>\n

\n Even still, he added, it\u2019s hard to say how fundamentally new technologies will change work \u2013 and \u201cproductivity may very well surprise us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The other side of that coin is how the high-tech transition will affect the workforce, as making a country more productive doesn\u2019t mean that more people have jobs; it could just mean fewer people do more.\n <\/p>\n

\n China is already facing a double bind of labor shortages in some sectors and unemployment in others. Even if tech-boosted productivity can stabilize the economy over time, it could first deepen that economic pain.\n <\/p>\n

\n Estimates for how many workers could be displaced by AI and robots in China vary, but domestic experts have estimated that this tech could affect around 70% of China\u2019s manufacturing sector. Last month, officials said they would roll out a set of policy measures to address the impact of its rapid adoption on jobs.\n <\/p>\n

\"Job<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe timing issue is very important \u2013 in the long term, automation is part of the solution to a smaller workforce. In the short-to-medium term, if not managed well, it risks displacing workers who do not yet have clear alternative opportunities, adding to social and political pressures,\u201d said He in Hong Kong.\n <\/p>\n

\n Managing this requires a \u201cserious investment in reskilling and upskilling,\u201d so that ordinary workers and technicians can move from repetitive manual work to working with automated systems or moving into higher-value services, he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n It will also require stronger social security policies to support workers as they change jobs, locations or sectors or face unemployment, He added.\n <\/p>\n

\n And overall, experts stress automation is just one part of a range of measures besides pro-birth policies that Beijing can take to mitigate the economic and social impact of the deepening demographic shift.\n <\/p>\n

\n Along with investing in education to give workers better skills, those also include continuing to reform the pension system (which saw the retirement age raised<\/a> for the first time in 2024) and efforts to keep people in formal work longer, according Philip O\u2019Keefe, a professor at the Centre for Population Ageing Research at Australia\u2019s University of New South Wales.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhile no doubt the very low birth rate will have big implications for society, the decline in total and working age population will happen over time, with time to adjust,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beijing \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 China\u2019s birth rate has hit a historic low \u2013 deepening fears of a major economic shock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-476430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}