Keith Bradsher

China also wants to be the country that makes all the equipment to produce advanced products.

And the equipment, whether it's for semiconductors, whether it's for electric cars, whether it's for solar panels,

The equipment for all of these categories involves a lot of automation.

And so China put the investments into doing the robotics, the factory automation needed to manufacture those advanced products.

That's exactly right.

They are really trying to make sure that the whole supply chain of advanced manufacturing happens in China.

It's not enough for them to take delivery of the latest factory equipment from the West.

Now they want to be making all of the latest factory equipment themselves and all of the latest automation themselves.

They threw money at these projects in incredible sums.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in government investment funds, going into many different tech startups in all kinds of areas.

And a crucial step in China's advances in the latest manufacturing came at the start of 2017.

A Chinese company was allowed by the United States and Germany to buy KUKA, a German company that in many ways led the world in making factory robots.

People didn't realize at the time how important this was.

I've been going to car factories all over the world for 30 years.

KUKA robots are everywhere in those factories.

And since the start of 2017, all of a sudden, that know-how, that manufacturing capability shifted to China.

Today, many, many, many KUKA robots are made in Shanghai.

And the knowledge associated with that, not just of how to build robots, but everything the robots build, like cars, has moved to Shanghai and to the rest of China as well.

They bought the company and imported and transferred the expertise to China exactly right.

And this helped China become very strong in robotics.