Chinese AI-powered agricultural robots can they replicate the success of new energy vehicles? According to a report by Hong Kong English media The South China Morning Post on June 21, Chinese agriculture is facing rapid labor shortages and an aging workforce. AI and robotics technologies could become a crucial breakthrough for agricultural transformation. Industry experts believe that although China's traditional agricultural machinery does not have a prominent strength, its capabilities in AI, manufacturing scale advantages, and industrial chain integration capabilities give it the opportunity to achieve a "curve overtaking" in the field of agricultural robots, just like the new energy vehicle industry.
The report indicates that over the past twenty years, the number of agricultural labor forces in China has decreased by more than half. Nowadays, large-scale farmland is mainly cultivated by elderly people, those with poor health, and people with disabilities. Production is maintained through small-scale operations, resulting in relatively low overall efficiency.
On May 21, 2026, the Tea Expo was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. The event featured a technical demonstration of humanoid robots picking tender leaves of Longjing tea. IC Photo
Zhao Feng, founder and CEO of GrainCore Dynamics, a Chinese agricultural technology company based in Shenzhen, said that although the overall strength of Chinese agricultural machinery has not yet reached the world's leading level, the development of embodied intelligence under the impetus of current technological revolutions may reshape this situation.
Hexin Power is one of China's earliest companies to explore applying embodied intelligence to agriculture.
Zhao Feng believes that with AI technology and the advantage of large-scale production, China has all the conditions to take the lead in the field of agricultural robots. This is similar to how new energy vehicles enabled rapid progress against traditional fuel vehicles.
Zhao Feng said that China’s agriculture ‘seems to be facing a serious aging problem, but opportunities lie within the crisis.’ He believes that globally, only China possesses both AI technology capabilities and the ability to mass-produce robots.
It's a bit like the Chinese automakers chasing after BMW and Mercedes back in their early years—even after 30 years, we still haven’t really narrowed the gap with these enterprises that have accumulated a century of technology.
"But new energy vehicles have given us a shortcut. We achieved leapfrog development in just 10 years."
Although the related technologies and applications are still in their infancy, the company plans to launch agricultural quadruped robots (machine dogs) this year. These are mobile intelligent platforms designed for complex environments such as farms, greenhouses, and orchards, capable of mimicking human farmers in terms of perception and decision-making.
According to The South China Morning Post, these attempts indicate that in China, a country with a population of 1.4 billion and highly sensitive regarding food security, the agricultural structure is undergoing fundamental changes.
Official data shows that in 2005, there were approximately 340 million people working in the primary industry in China, accounting for about 45% of the country's total employed population. By 2025, this number has dropped to approximately 160 million, making up slightly more than 20% of the total employed population.
According to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2024, among the permanent residents in rural China, the proportion of people aged 60 and above exceeds one-fourth; the average age of full-time agricultural workers is nearly 16 years higher than that of non-agricultural workers.
Meanwhile, according to the "China Robot Industry Yearbook 2025", the demand for agricultural robots in China has increased from 19,200 units in 2020 to 58,600 units in 2024.
Chinese Machinery Industry Group's agricultural machinery expert Wu Haihua refers to agricultural robots as 'the global forefront of innovation and the core focus of competition in agricultural machinery technology'.
Wu Haihua wrote an article in 'Chinese Rural Technology' this month, stating that since the United States launched its '232 investigation' targeting imported robots last year, agricultural robots have become one of the important areas of strategic competition among major nations.
Some analyses indicate that due to limited arable land resources, China has set a relatively cautious goal for grain production in the next five years. At the same time, it still relies heavily on the international market for certain agricultural products such as soybeans. Therefore, efforts are being made to improve efficiency and yield per unit area in order to enhance food security.
In March this year, the Chinese side proposed a policy framework specifically aimed at rural development. It aims to "develop new agricultural productivity according to local conditions, promote the integration of artificial intelligence with agricultural development, and expand application scenarios for drones, Internet of Things, robots, etc." Later, the Chinese side also announced a new version of the undergraduate professional catalog, introducing new majors including "agricultural robotics".
Zhao Feng said that even though the agricultural labor force has been halved over the past twenty years, he still believes that the size of the agricultural population in China is too large.
He pointed out that land fragmentation has led to meager agricultural profits, and the phenomenon of abandoned land is quite common outside of major grain-producing areas.
With the advancement of urbanization and the popularization of agricultural robots, he believes that the surplus labor force in rural areas should be directed more towards high-value-added processing industries in the future, while farming tasks should be carried out by machines.
The robot dog developed by Hexin Power is expected to be equipped with modular sensors for vision, environment, and soil. It will collect data from the fields and analyze it using AI models.
Once pests and diseases, abnormal growth, or environmental deviations are detected, it can conduct diagnostics, provide recommendations for action, and work in conjunction with other intelligent devices to achieve precise responses.
"Whether it is to achieve autonomous and controllable food security in China, or to gain a leading position globally like the manufacturing industry, the development path of agriculture towards scale, mechanization, and automation is inevitable," said Zhao Feng.
