Chinese robotics companies are shifting from simply replacing imported products to fully integrating supply chains. An example of this move is TIANZHIHANG's announcement on July 16th regarding its intention to acquire a controlling stake in MicroPort Orthopedics.
The leader in surgical robots plans to develop its products to integrate the business of manufacturing implants and consumables. The goal is to enter the orthopedic consumables market worth 300 billion yuan, which significantly exceeds the surgical robot hardware market valued at 10 billion yuan. This strategy is similar to how global orthopedic giants use robots as an entry point for surgical intervention, ensuring continuous revenue from implants.
TIANZHIHANG's Tiang robot has performed over 160,000 operations in 200 medical institutions, but the equipment-only model leaves implant revenue to third parties.
MicroPort Orthopedics offers not only a line of implants. For instance, their ADVANCE medial-pivot knee has over 20 years of clinical experience, demonstrating 98.8% survival after 17 years and more than a million implants worldwide. A critical asset is the company's international infrastructure: distribution networks, relationships with surgeons, clinical trust, and experience working with regulatory bodies in the US, Europe, and Japan. For a Chinese medical robotics company preparing for globalization, building such assets from scratch would take years or decades, whereas an acquisition allows this timeline to be shortened to one deal.
This deal highlights that while exporting the manufactured robot is possible, regulatory compliance, surgeon training, collection of clinical data, and insurance reimbursement cannot be achieved solely through product superiority.
The acquisition strategy illustrates a broader trend: Chinese robotics companies have achieved domestic import substitution in manufacturing and medical robotics, but different competencies are required for global expansion. In industrial robotics, Chinese companies hold a significant share of the domestic market but remain secondary players in Western supply chains, where existing robots have decades of experience in integration, programming ecosystems, and service networks.
In medical robotics, the barrier is not the technology itself, but the deep integration of existing systems into hospital workflows, surgeons' curricula, and insurance codes. TIANZHIHANG's approach represents the most ambitious attempt by a Chinese robotics company to acquire, rather than create, a fully commercial system. If successful, it will serve as a model for other Chinese firms aiming to enter regulated global markets where infrastructure and trust are as important as equipment performance.
The main risk lies in integration: maintaining existing relationships with surgeons and distributors while simultaneously aligning the acquired orthopedic business with the robot portfolio. The broader takeaway is that the globalization of Chinese robotics has entered a phase where technological competitiveness is considered a given, and the competitive frontier has shifted towards orchestrating the commercial system across regulatory, clinical, and distribution aspects. The industry is moving from creating good robots to controlling the global surgical workflow in which these robots operate.
Home robot vacuum manufacturers from China now control 70% of the global market. Leaders in this segment include Roborock, Ecovacs, and Dreame. Competition in this industry is shifting from price wars to the implementation of advanced technological features, such as the ability to overcome steps and the presence of robotic manipulators.
Roborock holds a leading position with a 27% market share. The company demonstrated revenue of 18.7 billion yuan, with 56% of this income generated outside of China. Among Roborock's achievements is the creation of the world's first Saros Rover robot capable of climbing stairs.
Ecovacs, which is the market leader in Japan, and Dreame are also actively promoting feature-based competition. Ecovacs, initially acting as an OEM manufacturer for foreign vacuum brands, later transitioned to creating its own brand. The company realized that constant participation in price wars limits both innovation and profitability, so it introduced solutions such as integrating wet mopping with sweeping, self-cleaning dustbins, and automatic mop washing and drying, thereby forming new product categories.
Dreame is developing a robot vacuum equipped with a robotic manipulator. This manipulator can extend approximately 33 centimeters and move objects weighing up to 500 grams, such as toys or shoes, to designated places before cleaning begins. This solves a major user problem related to the need to prepare the floor for the robot to operate. Dreame executives emphasize that consumers are purchasing unique technologies, and the company consciously avoids participating in price conflicts.
Premium prices set in Japan exceed those of iRobot, reflecting significant investments in research and development (R&D), including LiDAR-based navigation, AI object recognition, and intelligent route planning. Chinese firms compete based on functionality, not discounts.
New participants have entered the market. The Chinese smart equipment company Anker Innovations and the global drone leader DJI have also entered the robot vacuum sector, strengthening the presence of the Chinese industry. DJI's entry has brought sensory technologies and AI perception capabilities inherent to drones into home cleaning, which could potentially accelerate feature development. These changes in competitive dynamics led to iRobot, the pioneer in US home robot vacuums, filing for bankruptcy protection and being acquired by a Chinese company at the end of 2025.
Unlike smartphones or electric vehicles, in the robot vacuum segment, Chinese manufacturers demonstrate leadership through premium innovations rather than cost reduction. There is a sharp increase in patent share. The trajectory from OEM manufacturer to proprietary brand and subsequently to standard setting reflects the evolution of the Korean and Japanese industries, which was compressed into a shorter timeframe.
Chinese companies are implementing humanoids in real-world scenarios to collect data and develop machines capable of performing human tasks, marking an ambitious strategy by the country.
According to Bloomberg, current investment is concentrated on embodied intelligence, a technology that combines robotics and artificial intelligence to create equipment better suited to the physical environment. Examples include a humanoid robotic arm organizing snack packages on a shelf near Beijing, or workers recording simple actions, such as folding sheets or removing pillows from sofas, whose images will be used to refine the robots' AI systems.
This evolution signals a shift in focus for Chinese industry. After gaining attention with the martial arts movements of the Unitree Robotics G1 model, manufacturers have started prioritizing the machines' learning capacity. Giants like Alibaba and Xiaomi, along with sector startups, are creating embodied intelligence models that allow robots to acquire knowledge through physical experiences.
The Chinese approach differs from the American one, where companies use purchased data, simulations, and low-cost labor in countries like India and Vietnam. Chinese manufacturers, on the other hand, seek to place their own robots in authentic situations to generate self-learning.
The presence of industrial robotics in China is already notable. Data cited by Bloomberg indicates that the country installed about 300,000 robots in 2024, compared to approximately 38,000 in the United States. Due to population aging, Beijing sees humanoids as a way to mitigate the impacts of a potential labor shortage. Barclays analysts project that such machines could cover up to 60% of a future personnel deficit.
Several initiatives are underway: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China plans to introduce 10,000 humanoid robots into factories by the end of the year; investors have already allocated at least 100 billion yuan (equivalent to about 82 billion Brazilian reais) to the sector in 2025, surpassing the amount invested in the previous five years; furthermore, data collection centers are being established to train machines in domestic environments, stores, and assembly lines. Chinese companies intend to use robots in real contexts to accumulate millions of hours of learning experience.
Developing more sophisticated robots demands a vast amount of data. Unlike language models, these machines need to learn complex motor skills, such as handling delicate items or preventing cups from falling. Jacqueline Du, a Goldman Sachs analyst in Hong Kong, reported that leading companies have already achieved about 500,000 hours of collected data.
China has inaugurated 64 data collection centers and has 20 others under construction, replicating scenarios such as supermarkets, offices, factories, and residences. Gan Ruyi, head of algorithms at X Square Robot, emphasized that this is an area where the US does not have an advantage, highlighting that the Chinese capacity to organize workers and deploy machines on a large scale may be a distinctive factor.
In the United States, companies like Tesla, Figure AI, Apptronik, and Agility Robotics are also making progress with tests. Figure AI demonstrated the separation of nearly 60,000 packages in 50 hours of live transmission, achieving a speed close to that of a human worker. However, Chinese companies criticized this test for considering it overly controlled. Ai Wen, project director at Agibot, argued that the Figure demonstration still takes place in a laboratory environment, while Chinese robots are trained directly on production lines. Bloomberg concludes that the future of humanoids will depend on the ability to convert everyday experiences into learning for progressively more autonomous machines.
