Domestic robots become a new business card for foreign trade exports

Domestic robots are representative products of the current trend of "smart manufacturing going global". According to data released by the General Administration of Customs recently, the export scale of industrial robots in China will surpass imports for the first time in 2025, becoming a net exporter of industrial robots; In the first half of this year, exports amounted to 6.29 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.6%, and were sold to 141 countries and regions worldwide.

Recently, a quadruped robot independently developed and produced by a company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, has completed customs clearance and been successfully exported to the Southeast Asian market. It will be used for local factory security patrols, underground pipeline inspections, and other business scenarios. Moreover, at Switzerland's largest nuclear power plant, the company's quadruped robots have officially taken up their duties, conducting routine autonomous inspections in high-risk areas with narrow corridors and dense equipment.

As a leading province in the national digital economy and future industries, Zhejiang has taken intelligent biomimetic and embodied intelligence as the core track for cultivating new quality productivity, built a comprehensive collaborative industrial layout, gathered a group of robot related enterprises, and formed a complete industrial chain of "algorithm core components complete machine research and development global scene landing". Robot exports have also entered the fast lane. According to statistics from Hangzhou Customs, the export value of various types of robots such as industrial robots in Zhejiang Province exceeded 1 billion yuan in the first half of the year, covering nearly 100 countries and regions. Among them, the export of intelligent bionic robots exceeded 400 million yuan, accounting for about 60% of the national export value.

Robot production lines in Guangdong, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan and other places are operating at full capacity 24 hours a day. Orders for welding, logistics and palletizing robots have surged, and a large number of equipment have been debugged and directly shipped to Europe, America and Southeast Asia. In the first half of the year, the export value of industrial robots in Guangdong increased by 16.8%, accounting for 23.6% of the national total. According to Zhong Sheng, Deputy Director of Huangpu Customs, industrial robots from the eastern center of Guangzhou (Huangpu District and Zengcheng District) have been exported to 31 countries and regions, with a growth rate of 22.9%, while industrial robots from Dongguan have been exported to 70 countries and regions.

In Shanghai, new tracks such as artificial intelligence and robotics are working in both directions with traditional tracks, becoming the driving force and confidence for the improvement of Shanghai's foreign trade. According to statistics from Shanghai Customs, the cumulative export value of three major robots in Shanghai, including industrial robots, intelligent bionic robots, and surgical robots, increased by 1.2 times in the first half of the year. Among them, the export value of surgical robots showed an explosive growth of 2.4 times.

In recent years, China's robotics industry has achieved leapfrog development, with continuous expansion of export scale, and has been widely used in global production and life. From the category perspective, it mainly includes industrial robots, surgical robots, cleaning robots, and intelligent bionic robots, "said Wang Jun, Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs.

At present, domestic robots have formed a complete lineup of products for overseas markets, and humanoid robots for consumption, industry, and cutting-edge industries have fully bloomed. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the field of intelligent robots, China's research and development of quadruped robots accounts for nearly 70% of global sales, with over 400 humanoid robot products, accounting for more than half of the global total.

Our surgical robots have gained more international market recognition, and the intelligent medical equipment produced in China is benefiting more and more patients. In the first half of this year, the export of surgical robots reached 480 million yuan, an increase of 3.3 times, and the export market increased from 23 in the same period last year to 49.

Our country's cleaning robots have entered thousands of households, and intelligent bionic robots such as humanoid robots, robotic dogs, and bionic fish and birds are also accelerating their entry into the international market. The total export of two types of goods in the first half of the year was 18.09 billion yuan.

From European and American factories to Southeast Asian supermarkets, from overseas hospitals to underground tunnels... The robots that have gone abroad are a vivid reflection of the development of new quality productivity. The acceleration of domestic robots going global is not a temporary trend, but the result of years of technological accumulation. No longer only selling individual machines, the company has developed an integrated intelligent inspection solution to address the shortcomings of manual inspection in high-risk industries such as electricity, and has gained a large number of overseas customers.

It is reported that intelligent bionic robots and cleaning robots are newly added special tax codes this year. They have their own international trade "ID cards", which can better carry out accurate statistics and reflect the development trend of the industry. Intelligent bionic robots are constantly evolving and moving towards system integration of cutting-edge technologies such as AI algorithms, precision sensing, flexible driving, and high-end materials. As the most industrialized and commercially mature category in the field of service robots, cleaning robots are transitioning from "replacing manual labor" to "redefining cleaning standards".

According to international transportation regulations, the lithium battery used in conjunction with intelligent bionic robots belongs to Class 9 dangerous goods and has strict requirements for transportation, packaging, and identification compliance. In response to the needs of enterprises for exporting complete sets of "one machine, multiple batteries" and shipping spare batteries separately, Hangzhou Customs has launched "one-on-one" policy guidance to guide enterprises in identifying various risks in packaging, declaration, and transportation in advance. Promote the use of electronic identification certificates for the transportation and packaging of dangerous goods for export. Enterprises can submit materials online, view progress in real-time, and download electronic dangerous goods certificates themselves, achieving "zero errand" and significantly reducing the time required for certificate processing.

Domestic robots have become a new business card for foreign trade exports. Wang Jun stated that in the next step, the customs will closely monitor the development needs of the robotics industry, continuously optimize regulatory services, improve trade facilitation levels, steadily increase the "intelligence content" of China's foreign trade, and inject Chinese momentum into the global intelligent economy.