GUANGZHOU, China—Robots are playing a greater role in Chinese industry as manufacturers there feel the pressure of a severe worker shortage and soaring labor costs.
SHANGHAI—Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China has opened a cavernous assembly plant near the airport here that will soon produce a rival to the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320.
BEIJING—Zhejiang province is to invest $82 billion over the next five years to encourage manufacturers to adopt more robots to overcome the short supply and high cost of labor.
BEIJING—Young people in China don’t want to work in factories, they want to work in services or at Internet companies, says Terry Gou, CEO of contract manufacturer Foxconn.
BEIJING—Chinese manufacturers are increasingly investing in robotics to overcome the challenges of rising labor costs and fierce competition from emerging nations in South and Southeast Asia.
GUANGZHOU, China—In an irony of China’s growing middle class, factory jobs go begging while many educated young workers are unemployed or underemployed. A national survey of urban residents showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education.
BEIJING—Air pollution levels were literally off the charts here over the weekend, reportedly reducing visibility to about 100 yards in some areas and prompting some flight cancellations. Residents in several Chinese cities have been advised to stay indoors, and at least four deaths have been blamed on the smog.
SHENZHEN, China—China Labor Watch has discovered child labor at HTNS Shenzhen Co., an assembly plant that makes Samsung cell phones. This comes just two weeks after Samsung stated that it did not find any child workers while auditing the factory in September.
