Move Over, Humans. China's Robots Are Taking Over

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2026

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In China, humanoid robots are on the rise. Robots with heads and torsos have been spotted staffing the front desk at hotels, working factory floors, and serving lattes. It's all thanks to an investment boom and subsidies from the Chinese government, which is betting on "embodied AI" as the next frontier in a global arms race. WSJ's Yoko Kubota explains how China's robots got so good, and what the US is doing to catch up. Ryan Knutson hosts. Further Listening: - China and the U.S. Are in a Race for AI Supremacy - The Man Leading Trump’s AI Charge Against China Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our colleague Yoko Koboda was in Beijing a few months ago and visited a strange place.
0:15.2	So it's actually only open on the weekends and you have to book a tour. It's very competitive to book this tour.
0:22.7	Yoko went to a mall, but not just any mall.
0:26.6	This mall was filled with robots.
0:31.2	It's basically an exhibition of all kinds of different robots that China has to offer.
0:42.3	On the first floor, you could see, for instance, household robots
0:48.3	that can do certain types of tasks like clean the house or, you know,
0:53.3	make coffee, etc.
0:59.5	And the other thing, I guess that was personally more impressive is probably the robots that are able to sort out medicine,
1:07.2	some robots that are able to conduct some dental surgery or operations.
1:12.6	A robot dentist?
1:15.6	Yeah, robot dentist basically.
1:18.6	We can go to the second floor.
1:21.6	There they show robots that are a bit more fun.
1:24.6	So I saw one where a robot was wearing a Michael Jordan jersey and like shooting basketball.
1:32.3	There was a kind of a group of small robots that was dancing to dance music, kids like
1:37.6	that one a lot.
1:43.8	Robots making lattes and wearing basketball jerseys
1:46.5	might all sound a little silly.
1:49.7	But Yoko says people should be taking these robots more seriously
1:52.8	because this technology is shaping up to be a new frontier
1:57.2	in the AI arms race between the U.S. and China.
	...

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