The city of Foshan, the country’s furniture and ceramics manufacturing hub in southern Guangdong province, has rolled out multiple initiatives to support the robotics industry in the latest example of how local governments are embracing the country’s strategic industries.

The Greater Bay Area city launched two industrial funds worth at least 3.5 billion yuan (US8 million) combined, which would be “professionally managed” for the robotics industry, Foshan Vice Mayor Liu Jie said at a press conference in the city on Tuesday.

The local fiscal authority would grant at least 150 million yuan every year to support research and development, with each “key technology breakthrough project” receiving a maximum of 50 million yuan. This would cover core components like controllers, sensors, high-performance motors, lightweight materials and robotic bionic skin, according to a press release on Tuesday.

The initiatives also included “computing power vouchers” to cover up to 30 per cent of the cost of renting computing power for model training and inference, with an annual cap of 500,000 yuan per company.

The municipal government would also provide up to 500,000 yuan annually for schools, institutions and companies to train highly skilled workers and industrial designers for AI applications.



A citywide “AI and intelligent robot industrial alliance” was formed on Tuesday, with German robot maker Kuka, acquired by Foshan’s Midea in 2016, Huawei Technologies, and home appliance producer Hisense as members, chaired by the city’s robot maker Huashu Robot.

This initiative sees one of China’s biggest manufacturing hubs join other major Chinese cities - including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou - to bet on robotics.

Liu said that the city’s industrial robot output surged 43.5 per cent last year, while the entire robotics market in China was set to grow at an annual rate of 23 per cent to US8 billion by 2028 from US billion in 2024, according to a June report by Morgan Stanley.

The Tuesday event also witnessed a slew of new products from local firms. Kuka showcased a new collaborative robot named iico that boasts an ultra-high repeat positioning accuracy of 0.03 millimetres, equivalent to one-third the diameter of a human hair, enabling the robot arm to handle electronics and automotive parts.

The local branch of PICC Property and Casualty, the mainland’s largest non-life insurer, on Tuesday unveiled an “AI and robotics R&D insurance”, the first such package in the country to cover “technical solution defects” and “raw material defects”, according to a company statement.

The city’s government offered to reimburse up to 5 per cent of the insurance buyers’ annual rate, with each policy holder covered by up to 300,000 yuan.

Huashu Robot on Tuesday unveiled a welding robot powered by AI models in collaboration with Huawei and local welding machine maker San Qiao. The machine is able to scan workpieces with three-dimensional vision, automatically extract weld seam information, and plan welding paths and postures.

The product aims to make up for a labour shortage in the welding industry. In 2024, China was short of nearly 3.5 million welders, according to Huashu executive deputy general manager Yang Lin.