Beijing robot meeting highlights cooperation

China has been the world's largest market for robot applications since 2013. The trend has been further fueled by a corporate push to upgrade labor-intensive manufacturing plants.

As the nation deals with an aging population, the demand for robots on assembly lines as well as hospitals is expected to jump significantly. Already, people aged 60 or older account for 17.3 percent of the total population in China, and the proportion is likely to reach 34.9 percent in 2050, official data show.

Vice-Premier Liu He also attended the opening ceremony. He stressed that in the face of such demographic changes, China's robotics companies should move fast to adapt to the trend and get well-positioned to meet the potential huge demand.

In the past five years, China's robotics industry has been growing at about 30 percent a year. In 2017, its industrial scale hit $7 billion, with the production volume of robots used in assembly lines exceeding 130,000 units, data from the National Bureau of Statistics show.

Yu Zhenzhong, senior vice-president of HIT Robot Group, a major robot manufacturer in China, said the company is partnering with foreign robot heavyweights such as ABB Group of Switzerland as well as Israeli companies in product development.