CHINA, THE GUANDONG PROVINCE BETS INTO ROBOTIC FACTORIES
The municipality of Guangzhou city, capital of southern China's Guangdong province, has stood up the goal of having robots instead of humans produce 80% of the city's industrial production by 2020.
According to the manufacturing development guidelines issued by the municipal government, the installation of industrial robots will be favored and encouraged by the authorities in the factories of the mechanical, automotive, food, pharmaceutical, electronic and, in particular, in all establishments that produce dangerous articles. The document also mentions subsidies (30 yuan, 4.800 US dollars) for those plants that buy or rent a robot, and an extraordinary subsidy of 500 yuan for companies that fully automate production. The recent rise in the cost of living in many of the more industrialized coastal provinces has led to increasingly frequent protests and strikes by industrial workers, demanding higher wages and improved social welfare.
Just two days ago, in the city of Dongguan, also in Guangdong, more than 10 workers of Yue Yuen Industrial, a shoe factory that works for Western brands such as Nike or Adidas, took to the streets demonstrating against the bankruptcy of an agreement with the employer on welfare programs. The chief authorities of the Guangzhou municipality have thus concluded that the combination of the growing demand for sophisticated manufacturing technology with the increase in costs related to the use of human resources are providing a real opportunity to accelerate the deployment of robots in industrial production processes. The next step will be to strengthen the plants that make robots and to establish, by 2020, two or even three industrial parks dedicated to robotics.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-04/16/c_133267794.htm
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