China now home to half the world's industrial robots as the US falls further behind

China installed 300,000 industrial robots last year – nine times more than the US. The increasing number of highly advanced industrial robots appearing in US factories has long brought concerns about human job losses. It's certainly a worry for American workers, and it's a situation mirrored in China, which is home to around half of the world's 4.6 million operational robots. It's also a stark indication of how quickly the Asian nation is outpacing its US rival in this area. The speed at which industrial robots are being deployed isn't slowing down. In 2024, 542,000 were deployed globally – the second-highest annual total on record - marking the fourth year in a row that the figure exceeded half a million, writes the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). The report also notes that more than twice as many of these robots were deployed in 2024 compared to 10 years ago. The majority of last year's robot deployments – 54% – came from China. Just under 300,000 of these machines were deployed in the country in 2024. For comparison, the US installed 34,000, or just over 10% of China's total, a decline of 9%. Japan (4%), Germany (5%) and South Korea (3%) also saw their total installations drop year-on-year.