Every year, hundreds of millions of people in China sit in front of the television to watch the Spring Festival Gala, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most-watched annual program on the planet. It is not only a music and dance show, but also a showcase where the country decides what image it wants to project of itself. In this scenario of maximum visibility, the presence of humanoid robots ceases to be a simple technological curiosity and begins to function as a public declaration about the place that innovation occupies in the national narrative. What happened there was not just an artistic number, but a clear clue as to where the Asian giant is looking when it thinks about its technological future.
Kung fu, choreography and coordination. To present their robots to millions of spectators, the organizers turned to a deeply recognizable symbol: martial arts. In the CCTV broadcast available on YouTube we can see robots using traditional weapons such as swords and nunchucks, as well as doing tricks and jumping from trampolines, always in sequences shared with human interpreters. The choice of kung fu provided more than just visual spectacularity, it can also be interpreted as a close way of reading technological advancement within a tradition known to the public.
The magnitude of the event. The Spring Festival Gala has been broadcast since 1983 and is an inseparable part of the New Year celebration in hundreds of millions of homes. Reuters also describes it as an event comparable, in terms of media scale, to the American Super Bowl, capable of concentrating popular culture, political message and industrial ambition in a single night. What appears in that scenario entertains and, at the same time, projects a message and indicates priorities.
A gateway for the industry. Behind the staging there were specific names and a visible strategy. Companies known in the West such as Unitree, but others less known such as MagicLab, Galbot and Noetix, participated in the gala. The immediate precedent helps to understand the moment: the performance of Unitree robots in the previous edition went viral and, in a way, brought this technology closer to the general public. So the idea of betting on a similar show again is reasonable.
From the stage to the factory. The public display of these systems fits with a line of industrial policy that places robotics and AI at the center of the next Chinese manufacturing stage. In recent years we have seen how the Asian giant has invested heavily in this sector. According to Omdia, China accounted for around 90% of the nearly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, a global shipment metric that does not go unnoticed. Morgan Stanley also projects that Chinese sales could exceed 28,000 units this year, which would point to a notable expansion phase.
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In the end, what was seen on that stage went beyond well-executed choreography. Behind each movement appeared a country narrative that combines technological ambition, industrial policy and cultural projection in the same television image. The question is no longer whether these robots can perform in front of millions of people, but rather how much their presence will grow in the coming years and into what spaces of daily life they will end up integrating. For now, its massive presence is destined for this type of spectacle.
Images | CCTV
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The news
China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision
was originally published in
WorldOfSoftware
by Javier Marquez.
