China’s robot makers excel in hardware but lack the AI brains for general use

China now accounts for roughly 90% of the world’s humanoid robot production, with approximately 12,800 to 13,000 units rolling off assembly lines by 2025. The machines look impressive. They walk, they gesture, they sometimes dance at trade shows. What they don’t do particularly well is think. The country’s humanoid robot sector has become a manufacturing juggernaut, leveraging the same supply chain wizardry that turned it into the dominant force in electric vehicles. Some models retail for as little as $6,000 to $12,000, a fraction of what Western competitors charge. But beneath the sleek exteriors lies a persistent weakness: the artificial intelligence powering these machines isn’t sophisticated enough for the kind of adaptable, general-purpose work that would justify the hype. The hardware is easy, the brain is hard In industrial settings, Chinese humanoid robots currently operate at just 30% to 50% of human efficiency. That’s not a rounding error. It’s a fundamental gap that separates a demo-ready prototype from a commercially viable worker. The core issue is that most of these robots are limited to scripted tasks. They can repeat a motion they’ve been programmed to perform, but...