A Decade of China's Robot Games Tracks the Rise of Its Humanoid Robotics Industry

China's robot competitions have grown over the past decade from a niche activity for hobbyists and college teams into a national showcase for a robotics industry that President Xi Jinping has called a strategic priority, according to a Reuters review. The five-day World Humanoid Robot Games, the latest and largest edition of the competition, began in Beijing on Saturday, August 22.

The contests trace back to lower-budget events in the late 1990s and 2000s backed by an industry association and the Fujian provincial government, when competitors were mostly college teams and small wheeled robots played basic soccer with pre-programmed automation. In 2015, Beijing hosted the first World Robot Conference, a year after Xi declared robotics the "crown jewel" of advanced manufacturing, according to state media; that year's showcase featured mobile robots playing badminton.

By 2023, the competitions had become a venue for established companies to court attention, including Xiaomi's robot dog Cyberdog, which sold for about $1,500 compared with over $75,000 for Boston Dynamics' Spot. In April 2025, humanoid robots ran alongside humans in the world's first robot half-marathon in Beijing; only a fraction of the entrants finished, with some collapsing at the start. A year later, of more than 100 robot teams entered in the 2026 race, 47 finished, and a humanoid called Flash, built by smartphone maker Honor, completed the course autonomously in 50 minutes and 26 seconds — faster than the human world record set a month earlier by nearly seven minutes, according to state media.

This year's Games add a new challenge focused on robotic hands, judging robots on speed and accuracy at tasks such as tightening screws, opening bottles and picking up beads with tweezers. Analysts say engineering a hand capable of human-like precision and touch is among the hardest problems in building a working humanoid robot, and the shift to such tasks reflects the industry's central challenge: showing that its prototypes can perform real-world work beyond the spectacle.