Foxconn ups robot output in Harbin

Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing company Foxconn Technology Group will produce robots in a new robot industrial park amid an upsurge of robot production and use worldwide, but analysts said Thursday that increasing use of robots will not totally replace human labor.

Foxconn will build the park together with the Harbin Economic-Technological Development Zone in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilong­jiang Province, with construction set to begin May 1, and the park is expected to produce 1 million robots to replace human labor, media reports said.

Foxconn plans to produce robots used for spraying, welding and assembling. Nine other robot producers will also build plants in the park.

Liu Kun, spokesperson for Foxconn's mainland operation, declined to comment on the company's robot production plans or progress when reached by the Global Times Thursday.

He noted that the company has recruited thousands of employees each week for the past few weeks at its Zhengzhou plant in Central China's Henan Province.

The company had halted recruitment after Spring Festival, partly due to its increasing use of manufacturing robots, the Global Times reported on February 21.

Foxconn has boasted to replace workers with 1 million robots by 2014 so as to cut rising labor costs. It began producing robots at a base in North China's Shanxi Province in 2011 and signed a pact to produce robots with Yiyang county, Central China's Henan Province in July 2012.

Other manufacturers, such as Great Wall Automobile, have also increased use of robots in production and more robot production bases are under construction.

Experts said it would be almost impossible for Foxconn to realize its massive robot ambition, citing cost concerns, Economic Information Daily reported in 2012.

Sales of industrial robots totaled 26,902 units in China in 2012, an increase of 19.2 percent year-on-year, according to industry website robot-china.com. It estimated that China's demand for robots will hit 35,000 units by 2015.

China is experiencing a structural labor shortage, leading to rising labor costs, and enterprises will replace human labor with robots when the cost of robots is lower, Yang Heqing, a professor at Beijing-based Capital University of Economics and Business, told the Global Times Thursday.

As China's low-cost labor advantage gradually recedes, the replacement of workers with robots is good for economic growth and keeping industry up to date, as has been seen in many developed countries over the past century, Yang said.

It is a trend that more robots will be used to replace human in the future due to low costs, and robots can complete some high-risk tasks that people cannot do, said Li Youhuan, a researcher at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences.