Humanoid robots are having a moment in China, and a recent event in Shanghai put that enthusiasm on full display.
MIT Technology Review published a dispatch from what it described as a robot "carnival" in the city, recounting a day spent among the machines and the crowds drawn to them. According to MIT Technology Review, the popular machines are part of China's broader strategy to bring artificial intelligence into everyday life, and Chinese companies are actively building in the space.
The key concept behind the push is what researchers call embodied AI — the idea that artificial intelligence shouldn't live only in chatbots and data centers, but should be embedded into physical systems that can move, sense, and act in the real world. A language model can write you an email; an embodied system is meant to walk across a room and pick something up.
MIT Technology Review reports that embodied AI was a key facet of China's latest five-year plan. That detail is the most consequential part of the story. In China, five-year plans function as national economic blueprints, signaling to local governments, state banks, and private firms where investment and policy support are headed. Naming embodied AI in that document effectively marks humanoid robotics as a priority industry rather than a novelty.
That context helps explain the carnival atmosphere itself. Events like this one serve a dual purpose — part consumer showcase, part industry signal — putting hardware in front of the public while demonstrating momentum to investors and officials.
The available reporting is a firsthand dispatch rather than a market survey, so it offers a snapshot of the scene rather than hard figures on shipments, capabilities, or commercial readiness.
It matters because a country writing humanoid robots into its national economic plan is a bet that the next phase of AI competition will be fought in factories and living rooms, not just in software.