CRI听力:China Issues Guidelines on Robotics Development

The plan has been jointly issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission.

It's part of the newly-established 5-year national economic plan.

In it, it calls for technological breakthroughs to be made in developing the key components of robot, as well as high-end robots themselves, on top of raising the overall quality and quantity of the robots sold from China to the rest of the world.

Details of exactly how this is to be accomplished have not been forthcoming.

In recent years, robots have been introduced to a number of Chinese sectors, including scientific research, healthcare, education, and entertainment.

The International Federation of Robotics estimates China overtook Japan in 2013 to become the world's largest market for industrial robots.

Despite the growth seen in the robotics sector, Director of the China Robot Industry Alliance, Qu Daokui, admits there is still a lot of work left in making Chinese robot production more competitive.

"First we need to focus on developing core technology, which one could say serves as the brains of the robots. China is trailing behind developed countries in this area when it comes to traditional robots. China still imports most of the core parts it uses, such as electrical machine components, drives, and high-accuracy decelerators. These parts normally account for around 70% of the average robots' production cost. Finally, the high-end market remains marginalized in China."

Last year, China produced just over 30-thousand industrial robots, which is a year-on-year increase of around 20-percent.

The Chinese government's plan would see that figure tripled by 2020 to 100-thousand units.

Amid surging demand for robots in the service sector, Chinese authorities are putting a priority toward the production of service robots, with sales goals of 4.6 billion US dollars by 2020.

Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xin Guobin, says a number of steps will be taken to help achieve those goals.

"The first thing we plan to do is overhaul our planning for the industry, as well as integrate resources to make robotics production more efficient. From there, we will begin pouring in money to help build up the sector. This will include cash to finance the production of key robot parts. We're also going to do more to encourage investment in the robotics sector, both in production and services, which may include programs where companies can rent robots, rather than purchasing them outright. We also want to create a market environment conducive to attracting both financial and human resource support. We're also going to work within the international community to not only create exchanges, but to increase our global competitiveness."

The plan has been drafted along the lines of the "Made in China 2025" initiative, which is a 10-year action plan launched by China's central authorities to transform the country into a leading high-end manufacturing power.

For CRI, I'm Victor Ning.