China’s annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala, which is often compared to the US Super Bowl, showcased humanoid robots from four domestic startups during the Lunar New Year celebrations this week. This highlights the country’s push to lead in robotics and manufacturing. The demonstration comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said China would be a key competitor in the humanoid robot market.During Tesla’s earnings call last year, Musk said, “I think China will be by far the biggest competitor in the humanoid robot market. China is extremely good at scaling and manufacturing and is also strong in AI—the models being released there are already quite good and are improving rapidly.”The gala featured robots from Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix, and MagicLab performing martial arts and fight sequences with swords, poles, and nunchucks alongside human child performers. The event served as a showcase for China’s industrial policy and its ambitions in humanoid robotics.China is the world’s largest manufacturer and user of robots. According to an industry report by Omdia, Chinese robotics firm AgiBot shipped over 5,100 humanoid robots in 2025, securing a 39% share of the global humanoid robot market.
Why the hype around Chinese humanoid robot market has increased
The attention surrounding China’s humanoid robot sector comes as major players, including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year. Moreover, domestic artificial intelligence (AI) startups release a range of frontier models during the nine-day Lunar New Year public holiday.Last year’s gala drew widespread attention with 16 full-size Unitree humanoids twirling handkerchiefs and dancing alongside human performers. Unitree’s founder met President Xi Jinping weeks later at a notable tech symposium, which was the first of its kind since 2018.Xi has met five robotics startup founders in the past year, comparable to the four electric vehicle and four semiconductor entrepreneurs he met in the same timeframe, giving the emerging sector considerable visibility.Behind the spectacle of robots running marathons and executing kung fu kicks and backflips, China has positioned robotics and AI at the heart of its next-generation AI manufacturing strategy, aiming for productivity gains from automation to offset pressures from its ageing workforce.Elon Musk has said he expects his key competitors to be Chinese companies as he pivots Tesla toward a focus on embodied AI and its humanoid robot Optimus. Last month, Musk said that Tesla is betting on a future driven less by cars and more by humanoid robots, reiterating comments he made last year. During Tesla’s earnings call this week, Elon Musk outlined plans to shift focus away from vehicles toward its Optimus robots, saying the company would discontinue the Model S and Model X to prioritise robot production. Tesla said it will end production of the Model S and Model X and repurpose the California facility that built those vehicles to manufacture Optimus robots. “We’re gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory … with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current SX space in Fremont,” Musk said.In 2024, Musk said Optimus could eventually make Tesla a $25 trillion company, compared with its current market value of about $1.4 trillion, and previously stated that 80% of Tesla’s value could come from robots. While Musk said Tesla plans to build a production line capable of producing one million Optimus units annually, he also acknowledged that “we’re still very much at the early stages of Optimus,” describing it as a research and development effort. “We wouldn’t expect to have any kind of significant Optimus production volume until probably end of this year,” Musk added.
