LONDON—Western business leaders are returning from China “terrified” by the pace and scale of the country’s industrial automation, signaling a profound competitive threat to manufacturing in the US and Europe, according to a report in The Telegraph.
The executives describe an industrial revolution far exceeding anything in the West, moving beyond China’s old model of cheap labor and toward high-tech, robot-driven production.
Ford CEO Jim Farley called his recent trip to China the “most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” warning that the cost and quality of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) are “far superior to what I see in the West.” He cautioned that this global competition, which extends beyond EVs, threatens Ford’s future.
This fear is widely shared. Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue, abandoned his company’s internal efforts to manufacture EV powertrains after witnessing Chinese factories where massive conveyer belts move parts hundreds of meters, with robots emerging from the floor to assemble them until a fully-formed truck drives out. “There are no people,” he recounted, “everything is robotic.”
Other executives speak of vast, “dark factories” where automation is so complete that the lights are unnecessary for human workers. Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus, recalled visiting a plant that produced an astronomical number of mobile phones with only a small oversight team.
Jackson noted that China’s competitiveness now rests on a “tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,” rather than government subsidies and low wages.
This high-tech transformation is a far cry from the low-quality “Made in China” goods of the past. The nation is now a global leader in high-value, rapidly-growing sectors like EVs, batteries, solar panels, drones, and advanced robotics.
This shift is heavily supported by the communist government, which encourages automation through state subsidies and policies like “jiqi huanren” (replacing humans with machines), which offers tax breaks for industrial robot spending.
Data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) shows the dramatic results: between 2014 and 2024, the number of industrial robots deployed in China rocketed from 189,000 to over two million.
Last year, China added 295,000 robots, compared to just 34,000 in the US, 27,000 in Germany, and 2,500 in the UK. Moreover, China now leads in robot density, boasting 567 robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, far ahead of Germany (449) and the US (307).
Analysts suggest China’s push for automation is not only about dominating future industries and gaining leverage over global supply chains but also about mitigating the impact of its aging population. As Rian Whitton of Bismarck Analysis explained, China is pre-emptively automating its labor-intensive manufacturing to compensate for population decline and secure a competitive advantage.
This technological leap poses “serious trouble” for traditional Western brands. In Britain, Shenzhen-based BYD multiplied its September EV sales tenfold, overtaking brands like Mini and Land Rover, a feat attributed to the pace and speed of their development cycles—often executed in half the time of European competitors.
Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, argues that Europe and Britain must urgently boost their own deployment of robotics to match China’s innovation and keep their industries viable. He stressed that robotics significantly lifts economic productivity and that China’s lead in the sector is also significant from a security standpoint due to military spillovers.
Tordoir warned that the risk for the West is that governments will only prevent old factories from closing instead of encouraging the creation of newer, high-tech jobs.
The UK’s record is poor, with robot additions falling 35% last year. Whitton argues that instead of ineffective tax changes, the UK should offer substantial grants for capital equipment, stating that countries that had more automation during past economic “shocks” actually managed to hold on to a greater share of industrial jobs. Failing to modernize, he concluded, will lead to “dark factories in the West,” but the kind “where no work at all is happening.”