China-EU Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics Cooperation: Seeking Increment in New-Type Complementarity | EU-China Business & Technology Cooperation Fair Observation

The "intelligent transformation" represented by industrial robots and artificial intelligence is becoming a new growth point for China-EU bilateral trade.

On the 23rd, the 19th China-EU Investment, Trade and Technology Cooperation Fair (hereinafter referred to as the "EU-China Fair") concluded in Chengdu. Yao Ling, Director of the European Institute of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, said in her speech at the meeting that in recent years, the trend of China-EU trade developing toward intelligence and digitalization has been relatively obvious. Citing relevant data, she said that in 2025, China's exports of industrial robots to the EU increased by 2.22 times compared with 2021, and "is expected to gradually become a new growth point for China-EU trade in the future." On the import side, in 2025 China's imports of artificial intelligence (AI) products from the EU reached 55.29 billion US dollars, an increase of 20.5% over 2021, far exceeding the growth rate of China's total imports from the EU during the same period.

At the China-EU Intelligent Robot Industry Chain Matchmaking Exchange Meeting held during the EU-China Fair, Chinese humanoid robot developer UBTECH and the EU-China Digital Association, headquartered in Brussels and dedicated to promoting China-EU cooperation in digital innovation and emerging technology fields, formally signed a memorandum of understanding, marking the start of substantive cooperation between the two sides in expanding the European robot market, technical collaboration and other areas.

Juha Röning, Vice President of the European Robotics Association (euRobotics) and Professor of Embedded Systems at the University of Oulu in Finland, described the respective advantages of China and Europe in the robotics field in an interview with a Yicai reporter during the EU-China Fair. "For example, in precision measurement and manufacturing inspection technology, the Netherlands' ASML holds advanced high-precision metrology systems. This is a typical example of Europe maintaining global leadership, and such core capabilities can absolutely create value for the global industrial chain." Speaking of the evolution of China's robotics industry, he mentioned that when he attended the World Robot Conference in Beijing this year, he truly felt the technological progress: "Compared with a year ago, today's robots are more powerful, move more agilely, and their operational capabilities have also improved substantially."

New complementary advantages and scenario iteration

Yao Ling believes that the essence of China-EU economic and trade relations is that "complementarity far exceeds competition." Among the major products in which China and the EU each possess global comparative advantages, the two sides compete directly only in two fields—organic chemicals and mechanical equipment—while in all other categories they maintain their own distinct comparative advantages, and a pattern of direct head-on competition has not yet formed in the global market.

In the industrial robot field, according to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, in the first three quarters of this year the industrial robot industry's exports reached nearly 10 billion yuan, an increase of 16.9%. Data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) show that in 2025 China's industrial robot installations reached 354,000 units, accounting for about 59% of total global installations and setting a historical high, with China becoming the world's largest industrial robot market for two consecutive years.

In Europe, with the restructuring of the global industrial automation landscape, the "Big Four" pattern once evenly split between Japan and Europe has changed. Germany's KUKA was acquired by Chinese capital several years ago and has gradually shifted the focus of its investment toward Asia and North America; industrial giant ABB also signed an agreement in 2025 to sell its robotics business to Japan's SoftBank Group. IFR data show that Europe's new installations in 2025 fell 11% year on year to 60,500 units. Among them, Germany is the world's fifth-largest and Europe's largest industrial robot market, with fewer than 25,000 new installations in 2025, down 8% year on year.

"I am somewhat worried about the European robotics industry, because there are fewer and fewer truly European robot companies," Röning told the Yicai reporter. The engineering closed loop of robot products is fundamentally different from software development, and developing robot products is more time-consuming than developing software. Against this background, Röning believes that Europe lacks investors who believe in projects and have sufficient financial strength: "Europe's challenge is that the venture capital and financial support companies can obtain is not as abundant as in other regions, such as the United States, and possibly China as well."

Cui Hongjian, Professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance and Director of the Center for EU and Regional Development Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, analyzed in his speech that in the two major fields of digital and green, China and the EU share similar policy goals and common development directions, but there are institutional differences in their paths of advancement: China takes "top-level design plus policy-driven, with market vitality as the main approach," while the EU emphasizes "rule leadership and rule export."

He proposed that the traditional complementary-advantage model that both sides have been accustomed to for many years—"China provides the market and labor, Europe provides capital and technology"—is being restructured, especially in the green and digital fields, and that China and the EU can absolutely seriously consider forming a new cooperation model in which "China provides technology and capital, and Europe provides labor and the market," which objectively reflects the current balance of strength between the two sides in the relevant tracks.

According to the memorandum of understanding signed by the EU-China Digital Association and UBTECH, this cooperation aims to combine UBTECH's technological advantages with European industrial needs, promote the implementation and application of humanoid robot technology across European industries, facilitate the building of commercial partnerships, and uncover new opportunities for industrial application. The two sides will jointly identify and expand commercial cooperation opportunities in key European markets, focusing on manufacturing, logistics and other industrial and commercial fields, and promote humanoid robot technology to help improve production efficiency, optimize operational effectiveness and drive technological innovation. The EU-China Digital Association will rely on its extensive European industrial network, institutional cooperation resources and local market experience to help UBTECH carry out business expansion, evaluate commercial opportunities and connect with potential partners. At the same time, the association will also assist UBTECH in gaining an in-depth understanding of European customer needs, technical integration requirements and regulatory rules, and provide support for the implementation of its European market strategy.

From "compliance follower" to standard "contributor"

Strict and complex regulations are also a major test facing China-EU smart manufacturing enterprises. With the phased implementation of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act and the EU Machinery Regulation, which will formally take effect in January 2027, Europe has set high thresholds in safety assessment, explainability and human oversight.

In response to outside criticism that "heavy regulation in Europe slows development," Röning told the reporter: "There is a common saying that Europe only regulates, and I think that is wrong. We need regulation for safety reasons; if we want systems and modules to work together smoothly, standardization is the only way to achieve this."

But he also admitted that "in some areas, Europe may be somewhat overly cautious," especially when it comes to mobile robots and even AI-driven mobile robots, where prudent consideration of guarding against potential risks has indeed objectively slowed the pace of technology implementation. For this reason, he called on all parties to implement regulation pragmatically and to build professional Proving Grounds so that systems can expose problems and engage in trial and error in a controlled environment.

Luigi Gambardella, Chairman of the EU-China Digital Association, believes that China and the EU have opportunities for cooperation under the current circumstances. He said that Europe has a mature technical standards framework in the industrial robot field, many of which are based on international standards, such as the ISO 10218 series standards most recently revised in 2025. "This provides a solid foundation for EU-China cooperation; we are not starting from two completely different technical systems."

In Gambardella's view, the core bottleneck for Chinese robot companies entering Europe is often not that technical indicators fail to meet standards, but rather "how to prove compliance." "These procedures can be very complex and expensive, especially when companies have already completed detailed testing in China but are not sure which test results can be used directly in Europe to prove compliance." He further clarified that the AI Omnibus adopted by the EU in July 2026 streamlined the overlapping connection between the Artificial Intelligence Act and the Machinery Regulation, greatly reducing the duplicate regulatory burden for AI-enabled machinery.

Gambardella suggested that, building on the cooperation agreement signed in 2022 between the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), the two sides could launch joint technical initiatives for specific industrial robot categories, convening manufacturers, testing and certification bodies, system integrators and standards experts to jointly compare existing testing procedures and documentation requirements. "This does not require immediately reaching an agreement on mutual recognition. We can start with more easily achievable goals: improving the compatibility of testing procedures and the availability of technical evidence."

Speaking of the layout of Chinese enterprises in Europe, he also suggested that for Chinese companies with long-term operating intentions, compliance is only the starting point, and the next goal should be "to contribute to the standard-setting that shapes the future of the industry." "Especially in emerging fields such as humanoid robots and embodied intelligence, technology is evolving rapidly, and some technical requirements are still being formed." He believes that companies can rely on practical data from real industrial scenarios, assign experienced engineers to follow some standard-setting work, and establish technical credibility and strengthen cooperative relationships by providing technical evidence, "transforming from successful exporters into partners rooted in the European industrial ecosystem."