Sierens China: With robots learning how to win?

0
392

China wants to sustain its economic growth in the future, advanced robotic systems. A strategically important step, but politically risky, says Sieren DW-columnist Frank.

A waiter robot serving beer in China

A good decade for the American movie series “Transformers” is part of the of the biggest hits at the China box office. In June launched the fifth part of the robot Saga flopped, surprisingly perhaps, because reality has caught up with the Science Fiction in the middle Kingdom for a long time. The Chinese logistics company Shentong Express caused, for example, in April with a Web Video sensation, in which the strange Goings-on in one of his factory buildings is documented.

Like in a futuristic hive, hundreds of orange shoals there colored robot through space and sort in the wind packages. Up to 200,000 severance to create the almost self-employed worker bees per day. “A cost savings of 70 per cent,” commented the Pro-government Chinese newspaper “People’s Daily” impressed. To have Communist times, people spoke of a “model operation”. Or better yet: From the robotics industry to learn, is learning how to win!

“Made in China 2025”

China praised the mountains move in for the end of power of the working class and the West with its sheer mass of cheap labour one wasn’t intimidating, was yesterday. Today, the government in Beijing is clearly on automation. “Made in China 2025” is the name of the reform agenda, under the “workbench of the world” in the next few years, to the high-tech superpower wants to move up, among other things, in which it produces by 2020, 100,000 internationally competitive industrial robot. According to the “World Robotics Report, 2017” China is already by far the largest growth market in the industry. In the past year alone, sales of industrial robots grew by 27% to 87,000 units. “With such a dynamic growth in such a short period of time there has never been,” said Joe Gemma, the President of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

DW-columnist Frank Sieren

Since its automation in powers of density in comparison to other economies such as the US or Japan is still low, China is dependent on Expertise from abroad. With the Acquisition of Augsburg-based company Kuka has been incorporated into China’s high-tech industry, most recently one of the leading Robot manufacturers in the automotive sector, which provoked in Brussels and Berlin concern. On the Initiative of the then incumbent Minister of economic Affairs Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) have tried to the Federal government, at times, even the Deal by searched in vain for a European Investor who could take the generous offer of the Chinese appliances manufacturer Midea device. A strategic knowledge advantage in the field of robotics for the mechanical engineering specialist Germany as a business location is of vital importance.

China’s working-age population shrinks

China is trying, with its automation plans, in turn, the consequences of the One-child policy to counter: As the number of population is shrinking in the working-age and skilled workers are scarcer, are more rising wages in the future is inevitable. It is already a large part of the plastic and textile industries in lower-cost countries such as Vietnam or Bangladesh migrated.

The speed of the development and its impacts are currently the most impressive way in between Shanghai and Suzhou nearby industrial metropolis in Kunshan watch. Here is the Taiwan daring of the group, Foxconn, which produces goods for Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Samsung, in the spring of 2016, one of the biggest strides in terms of automation, with Almost 60,000 of the 110,000 workers were made redundant at the local factory and their labor force replaced by robots. Without that, the avant-garde of the working class, in Beijing on the barricades.

More and more unemployed University graduates

Why? Foxconn, which was in the past due to poor working conditions, and repeated in the criticism, has promised in the future, more and more skilled workers for higher-skilled tasks form, for example in the “development and quality control”. So people who develop robots. And people who control them.

Of course Beijing knows that such measures saved jobs of millions of migrant workers can not compensate for. And already qualified University graduates, it is difficult to find a job. Their number is increasing nearly as rapidly as that of the robot.

New enemy of the workers?

A mass of unemployment, should China bring its unskilled workers in a growing service sector. The grow in the double digits, but not fast enough. The Chinese save too much. According to the Motto “You just know never what happened.”

Beijing is in a Dilemma: A different path than the one China has taken, is not there, if the country internationally to stay competitive. Beijing must hope that the Central planners in the course of the renovation, yet something Clever comes to mind. Otherwise, the unemployed, the Proletariat will revolt at some point against the ruling robot class.

Our columnist Frank Sieren has lived for more than 20 years in Beijing.