GUANGDONG, an economic powerhouse and China’s largest manufacturing hub, has grown to become the country’s largest robot production base, according to the southern China province’s robot industry association.

Ren Yutong, executive chairman of the Guangdong Robotics Industry Association, said that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which covers nine cities in Guangdong, such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, as well as Hong Kong and Macao, is now the world’s largest robot application market and the region has also developed to become the world’s largest robot production base, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported Thursday.

Supported by Guangdong’s well-developed manufacturing industry and the province’s complete industrial chain, Guangdong’s robot firms are now seeing their businesses flourishing, according to Ren.

In 2022, Guangdong’s intelligent robotics industry achieved an operating income of 61.64 billion yuan (US$8.43 billion), growing 15.45% year on year, and an added value of 11.14 billion yuan, up 12.1% year on year.

Guangdong’s industrial robot production reached 165,700 units, increasing 2.1% compared with a year ago and accounting for one-third of China’s total output. The achievement has allowed Guangdong to maintain the top spot in the country’s industrial robot production for three consecutive years.

Spearheaded by Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai, Guangdong has developed into an industrial hub of robots, with a number of robot firms owning independent intellectual property rights and expanding from single-field applications to multi-field applications, the newspaper said.

A long list of firms engaged in the industry have emerged in Shenzhen, such as Huawei Technologies, Shenzhen Everwin Precision Technology Co., Googol Technology Co. and UBTECH Robotics.

Shenzhen’s robotics industry began to take off in 2000, supported by the city’s industrial policy shift to boost the electronics industry, as per the report.

In 2022, the total output value of Shenzhen’s robotics industry rose 3.9% year on year to hit 164.4 billion yuan. At the same time, the number of robot firms in the city expanded to 1,018, a 7.68% increase compared with 945 in 2021. Industrial robot firms accounted for 48.16% of the total.

Nanshan and Bao’an districts are home to most of the city’s robot firms and the number of patent applications filed by Shenzhen’s robot firms in 2022 surged approximately 5.7 times compared with 2015.

According to an industrial action plan for the robotics industry unveiled in June 2022, Shenzhen has set its sights on achieving a value-added increase of 16 billion yuan in the intelligent robotics sector by 2025 and rapid growth for industrial robots. The city’s “20+8” industrial supporting policies are also expected to bring opportunities to the robotics industry.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the global industrial robot installations reached 531,000 units in 2022, with China’s installations accounting for over 50% of the world’s total, ranking first in the world for nine consecutive years.

The revenue of China’s robotics industry surpassed 170 billion yuan in 2022, maintaining double-digit growth, while the output of the country’s industrial robots hit a record 443,000 units in 2021, an increase of over 20% year on year, Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, said at the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Robot Conference, which kicked off in Beijing on Wednesday. (Yang Yunfei)