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Straits Times
10-08-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
As global supply chains shift, China's exports of factory robots see a sharp rise
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox – As new factories spring up in South-east Asia and elsewhere in a global rejig of supply chains, made-in-China robots that staff production lines and handle logistics are rolling out with them. Shipments of factory robots from China – including robots produced there by foreign manufacturers – have risen every year since the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly tripling in value from 2020 to reach US$1.13 billion (S$1.45 billion) in 2024. Exports for the first half of 2025 hit US$746 million, a year-on-year growth of almost 60 per cent, according to figures from China's General Administration of Customs. The top three destinations were Vietnam, Mexico and Thailand, The Straits Times' calculations show . 'The sharp rise in shipments (to these countries) underscores the ongoing shift of manufacturing capacity away from the mainland,' said Dr Dan Wang, China director at consultancy Eurasia Group in Singapore. She added that the bulk of such exports were lower-end models for the automotive and electronics sectors. Trade tensions, rising costs and a pursuit of supply chain resilience have prompted both Chinese and foreign firms to diversify production away from the 'factory of the world'. The relocation of supply chains represents a business opportunity for Chinese industrial robot-makers in a market dominated by Japanese and European incumbents, said Mr Su Lian Jye, chief analyst at Singapore-based technology research firm Omdia. 'If a Chinese company is expanding overseas, they will bring their local supplier (of factory robots) along as well,' he said. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. 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'When we first set up a branch in Thailand in 2021, our first customer was a Chinese carmaker,' said Mr Zhao Chen, chief executive of the company's Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. The client, which had previously used Siasun's robots in China, engaged the company to outfit its new production line in Thailand. Some foreign companies that had used Siasun's robots in China also placed subsequent orders for their overseas factories in places including Malaysia, Singapore and Germany, boosting the company's sales, Mr Zhao told ST. Siasun's products includ e automated guided vehicles that can move goods around factories, warehouses and ports, as well as robotic arms which can move along six axes to perform tasks like car welding. The company's exports nearly tripled from 2020 to reach 507 million yuan (S$90.7 million) in 2024, according to its earnings statements. Over at Jaka Robotics in Shanghai, vice-president Liz Chang said her company has gained 'significant market opportunities' as more industries move into South-east Asia, leading to demand for fresh production capabilities. A number of its major clients in China, including Japan's Toyota, the US' Flextronics and China's Luxshare Precision, have factories in South-east Asia, she said, and the company – which opened an office in Malaysia in 2023 – sees the region as a key export market. Jaka's collaborative robots – robots that can work safely alongside humans – have been put to work in factories in South-east Asia that make car parts, electronics, food and beverages, and more, she added. Outbound direct investment by Chinese firms in South-east Asia surged 34.7 per cent year over year in 2023, according to the Commerce Ministry's figures. The manufacturing industry was the largest recipient . Omdia's Mr Su said the international market for industrial robots is still dominated by Japanese and European firms, whose advanced robots are integrated with clients' systems and prized for their reliability and precision. But Chinese robot-makers are gradually gaining a larger slice of the pie, helped by their competitive pricing, he said. By his estimate, China's industrial robots cost about 30 per cent to 35 per cent less than those made by its foreign competitors. Companies making robots and their components have mushroomed in China, as the country in 2015 mounted a push to become a production hub in this and other high-tech industries. Today, it has more than 930,000 companies in robotics-related fields, according to figures cited by state media in August 2025. The output of industrial robots has also surged: China produced some 369,316 units in the first half of 2025, up 35.6 per cent year on year, official figures show. China itself is the world's largest market for industrial robots, but fierce domestic competition has also driven Chinese robot-makers to venture abroad. One such firm is Speedbot Robotics, a Changsha-headquartered company that makes intelligent industrial robots, including one that can scan and detect spray-painting defects in car factories. 'We are looking to expand to areas such as South-east Asia, where the automotive manufacturing industry is growing,' said Mr Wei Xinghua, deputy sales director at the company, which already sells such robots to Canada. Another is Fairyland Technology from Wuhan, which intends to start selling its robots overseas in the second half of the year, said sales engineer Gong Jiawei. He added: 'We have pretty much sold to every domestic client we can possibly get, and we've appointed and trained dedicated staff to serve the foreign market. 'We are ready to go big overseas.'
The Star
01-05-2025
- Business
- The Star
Analysts: Alibaba's Qwen3 AI model family helps narrow tech gap between China and US
Alibaba Group Holding's third-generation Qwen3 family of artificial intelligence (AI) models appears to have narrowed the gap between the United States and China in this field, while cementing the company's leadership position in the global open-source community, according to analysts and reports. Hangzhou-based Alibaba's cloud computing unit on Tuesday unveiled its much-anticipated Qwen3 family, consisting of eight enhanced models that range from 600 million to 235 billion parameters. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. In machine learning, parameters are the variables present in an AI system during training, which helps establish how data prompts yield the desired output. Alibaba's latest AI models showed that Chinese companies have significantly closed the gap with US firms, while the pace of innovation is expected to continue in spite of US export restrictions on advanced semiconductors, according to Su Lian Jye, chief analyst at research firm Omdia. Omdia's Su pointed out that the impact of such sanctions on China's AI development efforts have diminished, compared to previous years. There has been growing availability of alternative AI chips from domestic suppliers such as Huawei Technologies and Cambricon Technologies. Alibaba's latest AI model release reflects Qwen's current position as the world's largest open-source AI ecosystem, surpassing Facebook parent Meta Platforms' Llama community. Open source gives public access to a program's source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Open-source technologies have been a huge contributor to China's tech industry over the past few decades. The Qwen3 model family is available on Microsoft's GitHub, the open-source AI community Hugging Face and Alibaba's own AI model hosting service, ModelScope. It has also been integrated into the web-based Qwen chatbot as the default model for user queries. Qwen3 has quickly become the most popular AI model family on platforms like Hugging Face, as the family's models combine reasoning ability, quick answers and cost-efficient adoption. 'Qwen family is the world's best, the most comprehensive, and the most widely used open-source model,' said Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and a key figure behind Qwen, in a report by Chinese media outlet LatePost. 'The whole market is pretty much in agreement about this.' Alibaba said Qwen3-235B, the largest variant of its new AI model family, surpassed OpenAI's o3-mini and o1, as well as DeepSeek's R1 in areas such as language understanding, domain knowledge, and maths and coding skills. Lennart Heim, an analyst at US think tank Rand's technology and security policy centre, expected China to match the US in terms of AI model capabilities, which would raise concerns about America losing some of its technological edge, he wrote in a piece published in the Substack newsletter ChinaTalk. Still, the US maintains ownership of 'more advanced AI chips' on account of tightened export controls, according to Heim. Meanwhile, AI chip suppliers from Nvidia to Advanced Micro Devices have made support adjustments for Qwen3. Shanghai-based AI chip start-up Biren Technology on Wednesday said its products started to support Qwen3 models 'within hours' after Alibaba's launch. The current state of China's AI model development marks a big difference from the time OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the world on November 30, 2022, according to the State of AI: China Report , published by independent analytics firm Artificial Analysis. After DeepSeek reset the narrative with the consecutive releases of its V3 and R1 models in late December and January, several Chinese enterprises – from Big Tech companies Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings to start-ups Moonshot and MiniMax – have achieved so-called frontier-level model capabilities, according to the report. Other than China and the US, no other countries have showed similar frontier-class model training, the report said. Meanwhile, Chinese engineers are making notable progress in optimising data and algorithmic techniques to develop AI models that are, arguably, on par with those produced by top US engineers, according to Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst focused on US-China tech competition as well as the AI and semiconductor industries in Asia. – South China Morning Post
South China Morning Post
01-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Alibaba's Qwen3 AI model family helps narrow tech gap between China and US: analysts
Advertisement Hangzhou -based Alibaba's cloud computing unit on Tuesday unveiled its much-anticipated Qwen3 family, consisting of eight enhanced models that range from 600 million to 235 billion parameters. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. In machine learning, parameters are the variables present in an AI system during training, which helps establish how data prompts yield the desired output. Alibaba's latest AI models showed that Chinese companies have significantly closed the gap with US firms, while the pace of innovation is expected to continue in spite of US export restrictions on advanced semiconductors , according to Su Lian Jye, chief analyst at research firm Omdia. Omdia's Su pointed out that the impact of such sanctions on China's AI development efforts have diminished, compared to previous years. There has been growing availability of alternative AI chips from domestic suppliers such as Huawei Technologies and Cambricon Technologies Advertisement
South China Morning Post
26-02-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Alibaba's US$52 billion capex seen as catalyst for China's Big Tech in AI race
Alibaba Group Holding is spearheading China's Big Tech sector in the race for global leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) technology and infrastructure with its spending plan, competing with US giants like Apple and Microsoft for first-mover advantage, analysts said. Advertisement The e-commerce leader's 380 billion yuan (US$52.4 billion) capital expenditure for computing resources and AI infrastructure is the biggest allocation yet by a private Chinese entity, a move that is likely to draw local peers like Tencent Holdings and ByteDance into the fray, they added. Alibaba, based in Hangzhou in eastern Zhejiang province, owns the South China Morning Post. The AI-focused spending budget, triggered by quick availability of open-source large language models (LLMs) for businesses to adapt, mirroring similar but bigger plans in the US amid heightened tech war and geopolitical tensions. The massive investment in AI infrastructure may be about 'democratising generative AI [GenAI] to the local markets', according to Su Lian Jye, chief analyst at research firm Omdia. 01:20 China's Alibaba releases new AI model, said to outperform competitors Deepseek and OpenAI's GPT-4o China's Alibaba releases new AI model, said to outperform competitors Deepseek and OpenAI's GPT-4o 'As China and the US are the two largest single markets, investing in AI data centres allows vendors like Alibaba, Apple, and OpenAI to tap into the economies of scale and offer their services at a much cheaper cost,' Su added. 'Whichever market can accelerate GenAI adoption and innovation will have an upper hand in the tech race.' Advertisement
