Keith Bradsher

What's remarkable is that China has become so good at making factory automation and makes it in such enormous quantities that nowadays you don't just find advanced robots in car factories.

You find them even in small back alley operations.

So last year, for example, I was in a gritty industrial neighborhood of small storefront workshops

in Guangzhou in southern China.

And I went to a small operation that was just welding together sheets of steel to make backyard barbecues for sale to local canteens in developing countries.

Very basic.

Ten workers, no air conditioning, open to the street even though the temperature was approaching 100 degrees.

Several guys with welding torches, big stacks of steel sheets around.

It was very basic.

And yet the owner said, I'm about to get a robot.

Hmm.

And I said, how does that work out?

How does that make sense for you?

And he said, well, a couple of years ago, if I wanted to buy a robot to automate part of my business here, it would have cost me $140,000.

Now it costs me a quarter of that.

And all that needs to happen is one of my workers does the motions for welding together these sheets of steel to make the sides of the oven.

A camera on the Chinese supplied system watches exactly how the worker welds the steel, and it then automatically programs the robot to do exactly the same welds.

Amazing.

Incredible.

Even in China, with wages much lower than in the United States, it's now cost-effective, he said, to replace a worker, or actually several workers, with a robot.