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Opinion
Why China’s AI automation push is a risky social experiment
Without reforms to improve wages, housing access and childcare, automation could entrench a low-fertility crisis and destabilise the social contract
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Emma Zang is a non-resident fellow on Chinese society at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis and an associate professor of sociology, biostatistics and global affairs at Yale University.
China is betting artificial intelligence will solve its labour shortage, as policymakers ramp up a nationwide push to deploy AI and robotics across the economy. But it may be worsening a different problem: the erosion of stable jobs for young workers.
China’s push has accelerated investment in industrial automation, installing more than half of the world’s robots in 2024 alone and doubling down on AI-enabled production. The strategy is presented as a necessary response to the demographic decline. Yet it is also a risky experiment: automating at scale before reaching broad middle-class stability.
Automation may keep factories running. Whether it can stabilise society is another question.
The government’s push spans robotics, AI-enabled manufacturing and advanced technical systems but the employment effects are uneven. Analysis by the Rhodium Group finds that the new hi-tech industries (electric vehicles, advanced batteries and renewable energy equipment) generate far fewer entry-level and mid-skill jobs than the manufacturing sectors they are displacing. These sectors are far more capital-intensive.
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