'' MADE IN CHINA '' : GLOBAL ESSAY

OVER the past decade - China has embarked on a broad campaign to use more robots in its factories, become a major maker of robots and combine the industry with advances in artificial intelligence.

Chinese companies have benefited from a national push that mirrors how the country's electric vehicle and artificial intelligence industries have grown, said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia, a tech research firm.

'' This is not a coincidence,''  Mr. Su said. ''It has taken many years of investment by Chinese companies.''

China's drive for factory automation has been a key part of achieving its position as the world's manufacturing powerhouse. Factories in China have installed more than 150,000 robots each year since 2017.

At the same time, manufacturing output ballooned. By the start of this year, factories in China were making nearly a third of all manufactured goods worldwide, more than the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain combined.

ROBOT installation fell last year, compared with the years before, in all four of the next largest factory  robot-using countries : Japan, the United States, South Korea and Germany. Japan installed 44,000.

In 2015, Beijing made it a top priority for China to become globally competitive in robotics as part of its Made in China 2025 campaign to import fewer advanced manufactured goods.

Industries received almost unlimited access to loans from state-controlled banks at low interest rates as well as help in buying foreign competitors, direct infusion of government money and other assistance.

And in 2021, the government issued a detailed national strategy for expanded deployment of robots.

'' You can see how well that strategy worked out ; without a strategy, a country is always at a disadvantage,'' said Sussane Bieller, the general secretary of robotics federation.

This Global Essay Publishing on China, continues.