According to foreign media reports, China's manufacturing industry will transform from labor-intensive to capital intensive, and the number of industrial robots installed in China will rank first in the world in 2016. Industrial transformation, robot density, young people's employment attitude and other factors are the main reasons for this change.
After swallowing up a lot of global manufacturing jobs, China will now hand them over to robots. China has become the largest industrial robot market in the world. In 2014, the sales volume of industrial robots in China increased by 54% year on year, which shows that China is speeding up the popularization of industrial robots. According to the statistics of the International Federation of robotics, the number of industrial robots installed in China in 2016 will rank first in the world.
China is expected to become an automation center, which denies many assumptions about robots and the global economy. Economists generally believe that automation is designed to reduce labor costs. It can create an advanced economy, protect manufacturing from the threat of moving overseas, and even bring manufacturing back. The motivation to popularize automation has never disappeared. However, in developing countries, robots will gradually replace jobs, and potential employment opportunities in frontier markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America are decreasing.
In China, the support point of economic strength has lagged behind the trend. Labor costs have risen sharply, while countries with advanced economies such as the United States have been less affected. At first, China relied on the advantage of labor cost to bring many manufacturing jobs, but the new trend has destroyed this economic system. New robotics are cheaper and easier to use than ever. In addition, many of the fastest-growing Chinese manufacturing industries, such as automobile manufacturing, tend to rely on automation technology no matter where the factories are located. Some manufacturing jobs can only use robots, such as precision work in electronics factories.
In fact, whether using robots made in China or robots from Western companies, the rapid popularization of industrial robots in China is also related to self-esteem. Steven Wyatt, head of marketing and sales at ABB robotics, a Swiss robot maker, said: "when Chinese export goods, they are often hindered by product quality. Now they say, "we use the same robots as companies in Western Europe and North America.";. &"This is one of the reasons why the Chinese government is pushing this change. In 2013, the Chinese government announced that by 2020, China will have at least 3 robot enterprises with international competitiveness, 8 to 10 supporting industrial clusters, domestic robots in high-end robots will account for about 45% of the market share, and the robot density will reach more than 100. Some analysts believe that this top-down strategy will produce "herding" and lead to wrong spending. If you invest in the wrong companies, you will crowd out the most innovative ones, says Gan Jie, a professor and director of Changjiang business school. ”
At present, robots do not seem to have much influence on China's job market. In 2014, the average wage increase in Chinese cities exceeded 10%, but this year China still plans to create at least 10 million new jobs. Chinese business owners believe that it is increasingly difficult for them to find young people willing to work on tedious assembly lines, which is the main reason why they adopt robots. Some electronics manufacturers say they have to cope with a turnover rate of up to 20% per month. Although some factories have moved out of China, the employment environment in China remains good. Perhaps other developing countries are more aware of this.