What happened in China The numbers from January and February 2026 are not a blip. China produced 143,608 industrial robots in those two months alone, a 31 percent year-over-year increase — faster than the 27 percent growth recorded in the same period a year earlier, when output totalled 91,088 units. That acceleration matters: it tells you the curve is steepening, not flattening. Zoom out and the trajectory is unambiguous. In 2025, China produced 773,074 industrial robots, a 28 percent increase over the previous year. Revenue from the broader robotics industry reached nearly 240 billion yuan (≈$35 billion) in 2024. In the first half of 2025 alone, revenue grew 27.8 percent year on year, with industrial robot production hitting 370,000 units in that six-month window. By the end of the third quarter of 2025, Chinese industrial robot export levels had already surpassed the full prior year's total — a full…