INDEPENDENT TECHNOLOGY OBSERVATORYSOURCE-VERIFIED DATA
01 / THE SIGNAL
China Decoded
AI. Robotics. Geopolitics.
China first · Across Asia
CHINA & ASIA / SEVEN DAYS
Published records in our China and Asia sample.
02 / THE PULSE
Follow the movement.
China at the centre. Local reporting and direct company research, with signals from Japan and South Korea.
GLOBAL CONTEXT
Beyond Asia
Selected Western announcements for comparison. The main feed remains focused on China and Asia.
03 / THE POWER GAP · ANNUAL CONTEXT
The foundations of power
Historical trend and data table
04 / THE POWER INDEX
Capacity indicators
05 / HUMANOID ROBOTICS
Humanoids, in numbers
Worldwide humanoid shipments≈25,000
Global shipments from Chinese manufacturers>95%
Shipments for research, education, demos & data collection69%
Global market estimates, not a complete census. Shipments do not establish autonomous work in production.
Scope & reference period
January–June 2026. Published by IDC on 29 September 2026; reviewed on 2 November 2026. The manufacturer share refers to supplier origin, not the destination market. The 69% groups research and education, performances and demonstrations, and government data-collection centres used to train robots. These are shipment estimates, not revenue, orders or production targets. The figures are reviewed separately from the six-hour news collection.
06 / THE BLIND SPOT
What we can see
Source register and last successful checks
START HERE / ABOUT THE OBSERVATORY
What you’ll find here
Follow technology developments in China and across Asia, with robotics, AI and tech geopolitics in focus.
News closer to its source
Discover developments from China, alongside coverage from Japan and South Korea. We bring together local reporting, company announcements and research updates, with headlines in English and links to the original publications.
Explore what matters to you
Browse recent updates or filter by country, topic and publication date. Open a story’s source details to see who published it and when, then follow the link to read the original.
See the bigger picture
Use the robotics figures and other indicators to put the news in context. Sources and reference periods are shown so you can distinguish recent developments from longer-term trends.
Sources & methodology
Comparable periods
Compare values for the same reference year. A missing regional observation stays blank. EU refers to the European Union aggregate when supplied by the provider.
Attribution
Model records and releases link to their publisher. Official announcements follow the publishing organization. For local media, a named Asian entity in the headline determines subject geography; publisher location is shown separately. Unclear media headlines are excluded from this sample. International collaborations and arXiv listings can remain unassigned. DOI means Digital Object Identifier: a permanent reference to a research work, not a news publisher.
Time and coverage
The lead selects a recent China story. The default feed shows the newest publications first within the selected coverage. The optional China-first order prioritizes six China records and two other Asian records where available, rotating publisher groups; it never fills missing China coverage with Western stories. This is an editorial selection, not a measure of national output. Equivalent stories in different languages can remain separate; the publisher rotation limits repeated groups. Publication time belongs to the source. Detection time records our first observation. An initial historical import can discover older material today. Company statements are claims by their publishers, not independently established performance. Non-English headlines are translated automatically using MyMemory, with a private cache and daily request limits. English glosses prepared at launch are retained. Machine translations can contain errors; they are not full article translations or independent validation. A story awaiting an English headline is withheld from publication and retried on later collection runs. Original headlines remain available in the source details. Feed volume describes the listed sample only.