Chinese robotics companies are converting Asia's aging workforce crisis into a fast-growing export channel, placing humanoid and service robots in Japanese factories, Hong Kong convenience stores, and classrooms training the next generation of automation workers. The push is backed by overwhelming manufacturing scale: Chinese firms accounted for 97 percent of global humanoid shipments of about 18,500 units in the first half of 20261. ANALYSIS Taken together, the evidence from Japan, Hong Kong, and mainland China's own factory floor suggests a coordinated industrial expansion that exploits a structural advantage — cost and volume — against incumbents who still dominate traditional industrial robotics but have been slower to commercialize newer form factors.
Why it matters
Japan has long been synonymous with robotics leadership, supplying roughly 45 percent of the world's industrial robots in 2020 by exports. Yet McKinsey projects Japan's available labor will shrink by about 1.5 million people over the next two decades, and a Reuters-Nikkei survey found 34 percent of 220 firms already using, planning, or considering AI robots. That demand is pulling Chinese entrants into a market Japan's own champions once had to themselves. Japan's robot industry booked 1.0456 trillion yen in 2025 orders, up 25.7 percent. ◆ The combination of surging order books and a shrinking workforce creates conditions where domestic supply alone cannot fill every niche, particularly in service and logistics applications that require cheaper, more adaptable hardware.
The big picture
The Chinese advance into Japan is not new, but it is accelerating. Geek+ placed its first overseas project in Japan in 2017. Keenon set up a Japanese subsidiary in 2022 with more than 200 support points. Dobot opened a Tokyo office in 2023. More recently, Unitree signed a Japan agency deal with GMO AIR in June, and Hitachi partnered with UBTECH in May 2026. Pudu's BellaBot delivery robot entered Japanese restaurant chains, and SwitchBot now serves more than two million Japanese households. Unitree is now among the best-known Chinese humanoid brands in Japan, with "customers increasingly finding the company rather than the other way around," according to an engineer at a Japanese humanoid software firm.
The pattern extends beyond Japan. In Hong Kong, Beijing-based Galbot is opening its first stores outside mainland China in Hung Hom, Kai Tak, and Wan Chai, with plans for about 10 more outlets in the city3. The company launched its first mainland store last August and has since expanded to about 200 outlets across 50 cities nationwide. "This is a genuinely important step for us in going overseas as Hong Kong is an important window and platform for [mainland] China facing the international market," said Zhao Yuli, Galbot's chief strategy officer. Hong Kong's finance chief Paul Chan Mo-po said the city "can serve a unique role in the development of the robotics industry".
Meanwhile, China has deployed over two million industrial robots in its own factories4. In Beijing, AI and robotics educator Chen Tianyu spends his off-hours visiting factories transitioning to full automation. "I take a nap and the world changes," he said. His roughly 30 students alternate between programming lessons and operating robotic arms on industrial hardware. ANALYSIS This domestic base of over two million deployed units functions as a proving ground that lets Chinese manufacturers iterate at a pace difficult for smaller-volume competitors to match.
Between the lines
Japanese clients reward "automation that plugs into existing processes, is maintained by local teams, and shows a clear return — not just a striking" humanoid demonstration. ◆ The string of local subsidiaries, agency deals, and service-point buildouts — Keenon's 200-plus support points, Unitree's GMO AIR partnership, Dobot's Tokyo office — reflects a deliberate localization strategy designed to meet that bar, not just a hardware export play. The Hitachi-UBTECH partnership is particularly telling: a legacy Japanese industrial giant is choosing to collaborate with a Chinese humanoid maker rather than develop a competing platform from scratch.
Galbot's Hong Kong expansion follows a similar logic. By framing the city as "an important window" for international markets, the company is treating Hong Kong as a regulatory and reputational stepping stone before broader overseas deployment.
What's next
Galbot's three Hong Kong stores open this week, with about 10 more planned. Japan's demand pipeline remains large: the 1.0456 trillion yen in 2025 orders sets a high baseline for 2026. ◆ Whether Chinese firms can convert volume dominance in humanoid shipments into durable market share in Japan and Hong Kong will depend on whether localization investments keep pace with unit growth. The 97 percent shipment share is a production statistic; the harder metric is how many of those units stay deployed, maintained, and renewed in markets that prize reliability over novelty.