I Toured Unitree's Factory. I'm More Bullish on the West

A tour of Unitree’s Hangzhou factory challenges the idea that China’s robot industry is already built on automated production. Most actuator motors are still wound by workers, and the company’s own filing describes its viral robot-assembly demonstration as a pilot, with production mainly manual. That makes economic sense: labour was only 8.1% of Unitree’s manufacturing costs in 2025, while materials accounted for 81.7%; even a motor line expected to cut labour per motor by 57% would lower one robot model’s total cost by just 1.7%. Humanoid products also change rapidly and have few practical uses so far: three quarters of Unitree’s humanoid revenue came from research and education, while less than 5% came from factory or other industrial work. Automating dedicated production equipment is risky when the product may soon be redesigned.

The argument is that this situation gives Western manufacturers an opening. At American wage levels, labour would represent about 40% of Unitree’s costs, making automation far more valuable; trade rules are also restricting Chinese-made robots and components. Historical examples show that automation accelerates when cheap labour is unavailable and products are redesigned to suit machines: Ford’s hand-assembled magnetos preceded specialized tools, while California tomato harvesting mechanized rapidly after Mexican farmworkers were excluded. The author argues that AI can reduce the engineering effort needed to program and integrate machines, helping the West automate flexible production without China’s large engineering workforce. Unitree’s factory supports the case that the machines to make robots remain “up for grabs,” even as a visit to BYD showed that some Chinese factories are already highly automated.