China’s Relentless Automation Drive Reshapes Global Manufacturing

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2008, and the number of U.S. glass plants fell from 35 to 21 between 2005 and 2015.

Those numbers are no surprise to the U.S. glass industry, which has seen its place in the global market dwindle to around 6% compared to China’s nearly 30%. One of the many reasons China has increased its stranglehold on the U.S. glass sector and overall global manufacturing is its fervent embrace of automation and robotics.

China’s automation play and aggressive export strategy have impacted the U.S. glass manufacturing industry. The strategy recently led to the closure of one of Pittsburgh’s last remaining glass companies in early April. The shuttered Charleroi plant was home to one of the many glass corporations that dominated the region throughout the early 1900s. Those companies, including Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which sold its flat glass business to Vitro in 2016, combined to employ around 8,000 people. However, those days are long gone. 

The New York Times recently published an article illuminating the vast scale of automation spurring manufacturing in China. The country has more automated capacity than the U.S., Germany, and even Japan, and more robots per worker than any other country besides South Korea and Singapore.

China’s ability to develop and engineer massive amounts of robots and automated machines enables manufacturers to prioritize quantity and quality at a reduced cost. It also mitigates worker shortages even as China’s population ages and workers become less interested in manufacturing jobs.

Conversely, the U.S. is falling behind in automation. According to a new study by London-based workforce consultancy SThree and the Center for Economics and Business Research, the Group of Seven (G7) nations are falling behind in various technology indicators, including high-tech exports, the number of software developers and artificial intelligence-related patent filings. The G7 comprises the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The European Union is a “non-enumerated member.”

China, however, invested heavily in automation with its “Made in China 2025” strategy, which included producing 100,000 industrial robots annually. The International Federation of Robotics noted in late 2024 that 1,755,132 industrial robots were operational in China’s factories. Robot installations in the metal and machinery industry increased by 35% to 41,578 units in 2023, a new record level.

“China has been investing heavily in modern production facilities for more than a decade,” says Marina Bill, president of the International Federation of Robotics. “Today, the country is by far the world’s largest market for robotics. Annual installations rank first in the world ahead of Japan and the U.S.”