BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhua) — A gaggle of worldwide journalists visited Shanghai Municipality and Guangdong Province, China’s two coastal financial powerhouses, the place they noticed bustling manufacturing strains, a various vary of robots and dynamic innovation hubs firsthand.
The five-day occasion was attended by journalists from a number of nations, together with the United States, Russia, Britain and France, as a part of a sequence of excursions that gave worldwide media a better have a look at the implementation of China’s fifteenth Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) throughout the nation.
Inside an influence robotic laboratory of China Southern Power Grid in Guangdong, Lee Seung Joon, a journalist from KBS, joined a tug-of-war problem with the corporate’s robotic canine Titan.
Though assisted by a workers member and pulled at full power, Lee was nonetheless dragged ahead in small sliding steps by the four-legged robotic. Titan is “truly powerful,” he stated following the sport.
The robotic canine is able to pulling a 2.55-tonne passenger automobile. It may also carry a great deal of as much as 100 kilograms and navigate greater than 50 sorts of terrain, together with grasslands, cobblestones and staircases, in response to Li Tianzheng, a workers member of the laboratory.
Within the corporate, greater than 10,000 drones and 700 robots have been put into use, stated Li Duanjiao, a senior engineer at China Southern Power Grid, in response to journalists’ questions on using robots.
Jeong Seong-Jo, a journalist from the Yonhap News Agency within the Republic of Korea (ROK), was amazed by Qingling, the corporate’s robotic designed to take away ice from high-altitude energy strains.
“The robot can replace manual labor in overhead work, significantly reducing safety risks. This is both important and meaningful,” stated Jeong. He added that demand for such merchandise additionally exists within the ROK.
In Shenzhen, a tech hub of Guangdong, robots designed for varied eventualities, reminiscent of training and industrial use, attracted the journalists’ consideration at UBTECH, one among China’s main robotics corporations.
According to Michael Tam, chief model officer at UBTECH, the corporate has already established partnerships with enterprises reminiscent of BYD, Geely, and Foxconn, with its humanoid robots now deployed in factories to deal with duties together with carrying, loading and unloading, in addition to sorting.
The headquarters of UBTECH lies in Shenzhen’s “Robot Valley,” which is now dwelling to greater than 200 corporations throughout the robotics trade chain.
“I believe Shenzhen is one of the leading cities in the global robotics sector,” stated 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 nation’s humanoid robotic sector expanded at an annual fee of over 50 %, with the market scale anticipated to achieve 100 billion yuan (about 14.58 billion U.S. {dollars}) by 2030.
At the Tesla Gigafactory and Megafactory in Shanghai, guests have been awed by a sci-fi-like ambiance. Robotic arms moved with precision, whereas elements swiftly flowed alongside the manufacturing strains to be assembled into automobiles and power storage techniques.
Journalists observed the superior sophistication of the Gigafactory’s manufacturing line. Some talked about the plant has greater robotic participation fee and fewer staff than different automotive factories they’d visited.
Construction of Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory started in January 2019. In 2025, the plant delivered 851,000 electrical automobiles, bringing cumulative manufacturing to 4 million models by the tip of the 12 months. In February 2025, its Shanghai Megafactory began operations as Tesla’s first energy-storage facility outdoors the United States.
The nation’s fifteenth Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), launched in March this 12 months, known as for creating new high quality productive forces to drive the financial and social development.
At Tencent Seafront Towers in Shenzhen, journalists realized how the WeChat ecosystem connects over 1 billion customers worldwide, and skilled good buyer and healthcare service powered by the corporate’s giant language mannequin Hunyuan.
Matsukura Yusuke, a Japanese journalist with Mainichi Shimbun who has labored in China for about one 12 months, stated WeChat is on nearly everybody’s cellphone in China.
“I truly understood the power of ‘connection’ after seeing the technology ecosystem behind it,” he added.