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China installs more industrial robots each year than the rest of the world combined, and has done so since 2021. In 2024 China passed a second mark: for the first time, most of the robots going into Chinese factories were built by Chinese manufacturers rather than imported. Both facts sit inside the wider contest between China and the United States (US), and both describe the China that South Africa trades with, competes against, and wants investment from.

The Common Sense has written extensively on the strategic competition between China and the US and what it means for South Africa — that the deepest contest between them is over the future of the dollar, that corporate South Africa’s tilt towards the West is a colonial inheritance rather than a strategy, and that South Africans should welcome the trade framework signed with Beijing. China is a permanent presence in South Africa’s economy whether South Africans welcome it or not; the question is what this country does about it.

The data come from the latest 2025 edition of World Robotics, published by the International Federation of Robotics. It covers physical robots used in factories for tasks such as welding, moving components, and handling materials, across around 40 countries.

The following seven charts set out the key data.

The first chart shows industrial robots installed worldwide in each of the past eleven years.

Global installations more than doubled between 2014 and 2022, then flattened. The three years to 2024 sit within 12 000 units of each other.

The second chart shows how much of that global total went to China.

The following chart shows the number of industrial robot installations for China and the rest of the world between 2014 and 2024. Note how the global figure essentially flatlines since around 2018, while the Chinese number continues to lift.

The fourth chart ranks the 10 largest markets for new installations in 2024.

China installed almost seven times as many robots as Japan and almost nine times as many as the United States.

The fifth chart ranks the 10 largest markets by stock. Operational stock refers to industrial robots already working in factories.

At 2 027 200 units, China holds 43% of the 4 664 000 industrial robots operating worldwide. Its lead is relatively narrower here than on annual installations, because stock accumulates over decades.

The sixth chart splits China’s installations by where the robot was made.

Chinese suppliers overtook foreign suppliers for the first time in 2024.

The seventh chart shows which Chinese industries are buying the robots. Electrical and electronics covers factories making phones, computers, chips, and appliances. Automotive covers carmakers and their suppliers. General industry is the residual: everything else that manufactures physical goods.

Automotive has fallen two years running and electronics has not recovered its 2022 level. The growth is centred around general industry.

The eight chart shows sub-categories of industries that fall within general industry and tracks the installation of robots in each.

Metal and machinery is the largest by a distance and hit a record in 2024. Food installations nearly doubled. Textiles barely used robots as recently as 2022.

China’s lead in global robotics and its ability to manufacture those robots in house is a very important data point in understanding the global balance of power between the US and China. For a country like South Africa, The Chinese data need to be read especially carefully. China’s industrial influence will very likely expand in South Africa and put great pressure on established Western-domiciled firms. What South Africa is seeing in its auto sales is likely something that is going to play out across the broader economy. Then there is the opportunity for South Africa to take advantage of the Chinese industrial market, an opportunity that got a significant boost a few weeks ago when China opened its economy to South Africa exporters on a tariff-free basis.

But as this newspaper has argued at length, South Africa’s economy does not take advantage of such opportunities because empowerment policy taxes capital on arrival, expropriation threatens to seize investments below market value, the wrong energy and oil and gas policies are followed, and foreign policy prioritises grandstanding over taking advantage of actual trade and investment deals, whether with Washington or Beijing. As a consequence, fixed investment has fallen below 15% of GDP against the 30% target set by the National Development Plan in 2012. China can do a lot to alter that, but South Africa would first need to get its domestic policy house in order.