Industry News

BEIJING, April 22 (Xinhua) -- A group of international journalists visited Shanghai Municipality and Guangdong Province, China's two coastal economic powerhouses, where they observed bustling production lines, a diverse range of robots and dynamic innovation hubs firsthand.

The five-day event was attended by journalists from multiple countries, including the United States, Russia, Britain and France, as part of a series of tours that gave international media a closer look at the implementation of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) across the country.

Inside a power robot laboratory of China Southern Power Grid in Guangdong, Lee Seung Joon, a journalist from KBS, joined a tug-of-war challenge with the company's robotic dog Titan.

Though assisted by a staff member and pulled at full strength, Lee was still dragged forward in small sliding steps by the four-legged robot. Titan is "truly powerful," he said following the game.

The robotic dog is capable of pulling a 2.55-tonne passenger vehicle. It can also carry loads of up to 100 kilograms and navigate more than 50 types of terrain, including grasslands, cobblestones and staircases, according to Li Tianzheng, a staff member of the laboratory.

Within the company, more than 10,000 drones and 700 robots have been put into use, said Li Duanjiao, a senior engineer at China Southern Power Grid, in response to journalists' questions about the use of robots.

Jeong Seong-Jo, a journalist from the Yonhap News Agency in the Republic of Korea (ROK), was amazed by Qingling, the company's robot designed to remove ice from high-altitude power lines.

"The robot can replace manual labor in overhead work, significantly reducing safety risks. This is both important and meaningful," said Jeong. He added that demand for such products also exists in the ROK.

In Shenzhen, a tech hub of Guangdong, robots designed for various scenarios, such as education and industrial use, attracted the journalists' attention at UBTECH, one of China's leading robotics companies.

According to Michael Tam, chief brand officer at UBTECH, the company has already established partnerships with enterprises such as BYD, Geely, and Foxconn, with its humanoid robots now deployed in factories to handle tasks including carrying, loading and unloading, as well as sorting.

The headquarters of UBTECH lies in Shenzhen's "Robot Valley," which is now home to more than 200 companies across the robotics industry chain.

"I believe Shenzhen is one of the leading cities in the global robotics sector," said Nelson Pancini de Sa, a journalist with Brazil's UOL Media Group. "I saw many humanoid robots today and really look forward to their future development," he added.

According to the National Development and Reform Commission, in 2025, the country's humanoid robot sector expanded at an annual rate of over 50 percent, with the market scale expected to reach 100 billion yuan (about 14.58 billion U.S. dollars) by 2030.

At the Tesla Gigafactory and Megafactory in Shanghai, visitors were awed by a sci-fi-like atmosphere. Robotic arms moved with precision, while components swiftly flowed along the production lines to be assembled into vehicles and energy storage systems.

Journalists noticed the advanced sophistication of the Gigafactory's production line. Some mentioned the plant has higher robot participation rate and fewer employees than other automotive factories they had visited.

Construction of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory began in January 2019. In 2025, the plant delivered 851,000 electric vehicles, bringing cumulative production to 4 million units by the end of the year. In February 2025, its Shanghai Megafactory started operations as Tesla's first energy-storage facility outside the United States.

The country's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), released in March this year, called for developing new quality productive forces to drive the economic and social growth.

At Tencent Seafront Towers in Shenzhen, journalists learned how the WeChat ecosystem connects over 1 billion users worldwide, and experienced smart customer and healthcare service powered by the company's large language model Hunyuan.

Matsukura Yusuke, a Japanese journalist with Mainichi Shimbun who has worked in China for about one year, said WeChat is on almost everyone's phone in China.

"I truly understood the power of 'connection' after seeing the technology ecosystem behind it," he added.