China’s Lunar New Year TV Show Becomes a Spectacle as Humanoid Robots Perform Kung Fu and Backflips
China’s biggest TV show turned into a humanoid robot spectacle with kung fu and backflips as Beijing pushes AI manufacturing dominance and IPO hype.
BEIJING China’s most-watched TV show, the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, on Monday showcased the country’s cutting-edge industrial policy and Beijing’s push to dominate humanoid robots and the future of manufacturing.
Four rising humanoid robot startups Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab demonstrated their products at the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.
For American viewers, it is basically like watching the biggest night in entertainment suddenly double as a national tech demo. The program’s first three sketches leaned heavily into humanoid robots, with Unitree taking center stage in a martial arts performance that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie.
More than a dozen Unitree humanoids performed fight sequences while waving swords, poles and nunchucks, all while moving right alongside human children performers. It was flashy, but it was also meant to prove a point. These machines are getting faster, more coordinated, and a lot harder to dismiss.
The fight sequences included a technically ambitious one that imitated the wobbly moves and backward falls of China’s “drunken boxing” martial arts style, showing innovations in multi-robot coordination and fault recovery where a robot can get up after falling down.
The opening sketch also put ByteDance’s AI chatbot Doubao front and center. Later, four Noetix humanoid robots joined human actors in a comedy skit, while MagicLab robots performed a synchronized dance with human performers during the song “We Are Made in China.”
The hype surrounding China’s humanoid robot sector comes as major players including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year, while domestic artificial intelligence startups roll out new frontier models during the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday.
This is not even China’s first robot flex. Last year’s gala stunned viewers with 16 full-size Unitree humanoids twirling handkerchiefs and dancing in unison with human performers.
Unitree’s founder met President Xi Jinping weeks later at a high-profile tech symposium, and Xi has met five robotics startup founders in the past year, comparable to the four electric vehicle and four semiconductor entrepreneurs he met in the same timeframe, giving the nascent sector unusual visibility.
Georg Stieler said the gala has long been used to highlight Beijing’s tech ambitions.
“What distinguishes the gala from comparable events elsewhere is the directness of the pipeline from industrial policy to prime-time spectacle,” Stieler said.
“Companies that appear on the gala stage receive tangible rewards in government orders, investor attention, and market access.”
“It’s been just one year and the performance jump is striking,” Stieler said, adding that the robots’ impressive motion control showed Unitree’s focus on developing robot “brains”, the AI-powered software that enables them to complete fine motor tasks that can be used in real-world factory settings.
Behind the spectacle of robots running marathons and executing kung-fu kicks and backflips, China has positioned robotics and AI at the heart of its next-generation AI+ manufacturing strategy, betting that productivity gains from automation will offset pressures from its aging work force.
“Humanoids bundle a lot of China’s strengths into one narrative: AI capability, hardware supply chain, and manufacturing ambition. They are also the most ‘legible’ form factor for the public and officials,” said Beijing-based tech analyst Poe Zhao.
“In an early market, attention becomes a resource.”
China accounted for 90% of the roughly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped globally last year, far ahead of U.S. rivals including Tesla’s Optimus, according to research firm Omdia.
Morgan Stanley projects that China’s humanoid sales will more than double to 28,000 units this year.
Elon Musk has said he expects his biggest competitor to be Chinese companies as he pivots Tesla toward a focus on embodied AI and its flagship humanoid Optimus.
“People outside China underestimate China, but China is an ass-kicker next level,” Musk said last month.