Fixing Late Stage Empire

NYT: Car factories in the United States also use automation, but much of the equipment comes from China. Most of the world’s car assembly plants built in the past 20 years were in China, and an automation industry grew up around them.

Chinese companies also bought overseas suppliers of advanced robotics, like Kuka of Germany, and moved much of their operations to China. When Volkswagen opened an electric car factory a year ago in Hefei, it had only one robot from Germany and 1,074 robots made in Shanghai.

China’s rapid advance in factory robotics has been propelled from the top down. Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, which began a decade ago, set out 10 industries in which China sought to be globally competitive. Robotics was one of them.

… Last month, Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, said in his annual report to the legislature that the country’s plans this year would include an effort to “vigorously develop” intelligent robots. The country’s top economic planning agency announced a $137 billion national venture capital fund for robotics, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.

China’s government-controlled banks have increased lending to industrial borrowers over the past four years by a staggering $1.9 trillion. That has paid for the construction of factories as well as the replacement of equipment at existing ones.

China’s universities produce about 350,000 mechanical engineering graduates per year, as well as electricians, welders and other trained technicians.

By comparison, American universities graduate about 45,000 mechanical engineers each year.

Jonathan Hurst, the chief robot officer and a co-founder of Agility Robotics, a leading American robot manufacturer, said finding skilled employees had been one of his biggest challenges. As a graduate student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Mr. Hurst said, he was one of two mechanical engineers