China's Robot Factory Is Now Targeting Europe's Industrial Core

China has turned a decade of factory-floor dominance into a commanding position in humanoid robotics — and is now exporting that lead. With 54% of global robot deployments and a humanoid cluster in Shenzhen producing models already appearing at CES 2026, Europe faces a narrowing window. The question for European operators and investors is no longer whether China leads. It is what to do before Chinese platforms lock in the data and distribution advantages that make catching up structurally harder.

What happened in China China did not stumble into robotics dominance. It engineered it. Flagged as a strategic priority under Made in China 2025, the sector has been built methodically — from component supply chains to full-system integration to international expansion. The results are now unambiguous. In 2024, China represented 54% of global industrial robot deployments, according to the IFR World Robotics 2025 report. It installs more robots per year than the rest of the world combined. It manufactures approximately 33% of the world's industrial robots. And it now ranks second globally in robot density, with 470 robots per 10,000 employees — ahead of both Germany and Japan, and having overtaken Germany in industrial robot utilisation. That factory-automation base is now the launchpad for humanoid robotics. Shenzhen's Nanshan District has emerged as the sector's global epicentre, home to UBTech, LimX Dynamics, Unitree, and more than 20 other firms. At…

China's Robot Factory Is Now Targeting Europe's Industrial Core

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