China’s secret weapon in the trade war is an army of factory robots, powered by artificial intelligence, that have revolutionized manufacturing.

中国在贸易战中的秘密武器是一支已经彻底改变了制造业、由人工智能驱动的工业机器人大军。

Factories are being automated across China at a breakneck pace. With engineers and electricians tending to fleets of robots, these operations are bringing down the cost of manufacturing while improving quality.

中国各地的工厂正在飞速实现自动化。工程师和电工们管理着机器人队伍，自动化的操作在降低制造成本的同时，提高了产品质量。

As a result, China’s factories will be able to keep the price of many of its exports lower, giving it an advantage in fighting the trade war and President Trump’s high tariffs. China is also facing new trade barriers by the European Union and developing countries ranging from Brazil and India to Turkey and Thailand.

因此，中国的工厂将有能力让许多出口产品的价格保持在较低水平，从而在应对贸易战和特朗普总统的高关税方面占据优势。中国也正面临着来自欧盟以及巴西、印度、土耳其、泰国等发展中国家的新贸易壁垒。

Factories are now more automated in China than in the United States, Germany or Japan. China has more factory robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers than any other country except South Korea or Singapore, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

中国工厂的自动化程度现已超过了美国、德国或日本的水平。据国际机器人联合会，中国平均到每万名制造业工人头上的工厂机器人数量仅次于韩国和新加坡。

China’s automation drive has been guided by government directives and backed with huge investment. And as robots replace workers, automation positions China to continue to dominate mass production even as its labor force ages and becomes less willing to take industrial jobs.

中国的自动化进程得到了政策引导以及大规模的投入。随着机器人取代工人，即使在劳动力老龄化且人们越来越不愿意从事工业工作的情况下，自动化也能让中国继续主导大规模生产。

宁波的极氪汽车装配厂，屏幕上显示的是机器人正在接受的欢迎访客训练。极氪工厂的迎客机器人，它有一只人形手。极氪工厂车身车间的机械臂在忙碌地运转。

He Liang, founder and chief executive of Yunmu Intelligent Manufacturing, one of China’s top producers of humanoid robots, said China was striving next to turn robotics into an entire new sector of business.

云幕智造是中国顶尖的人形机器人制造商之一，其创始人兼首席执行官贺亮说，中国下一步将努力把机器人技术打造成一个全新的商业领域。

“The expectation for humanoid robots is to create another electric car industry,” he said. “So from this perspective, it is a national strategy.”

“对人形机器人的期望是打造另一个电动汽车产业，”他说。“因此，从这个角度来看，这是一项国家战略。”

Robots are replacing workers not just in car factories but even in China’s many thousands of back-alley workshops.

机器人不仅正在取代汽车工厂的工人，甚至也在取代中国成千上万个小作坊的工人。

Elon Li’s curbside workshop in Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southeastern China, has 11 workers who cut and weld metal to make inexpensive ovens and barbecue equipment. He is now preparing to pay $40,000 to a Chinese company for a robotic arm with a camera. The device uses artificial intelligence to observe how a worker welds the sides of an oven, and then duplicates the action with minimal human intervention.

埃隆·李（音）在中国东南部的商业中心广州有一个路边作坊，雇佣了11名切割和焊接金属的工人，制造廉价的烤箱和烧烤设备。他目前正准备花逾29万元从一家中国公司购买一个带摄像头的机械臂。这个设备使用人工智能来观察工人如何将烤箱的各面焊接在一起，然后在最少的人工干预下重复那些动作。

Only four years ago, the same system was available only from foreign robot companies and cost nearly $140,000. “Before, I never would have imagined investing in automation,” Mr. Li said, adding that a human employee “can only work for eight hours a day, but a machine can work 24 hours.”

仅仅四年前，同样的系统只能从国外的机器人公司进口，售价接近100万元。李先生说，“以前，我从未想过要投资自动化”，并补充道，人类员工“每天只能工作八小时，但机器能24小时工作”。

广州一家生产烤箱和炊具的小工厂。这家工厂计划购买一个机械臂，用人工智能来复制人工将烤箱各面焊接起来的动作。

Bigger companies bet far more on automation.

规模更大的公司在自动化方面的投入更大。

In Ningbo, a huge factory for Zeekr, a Chinese electric carmaker, had 500 robots when it opened four years ago. Now there are 820, and many more are planned.

中国电动汽车制造商极氪在宁波的大型工厂四年前投产时就有500台机器人。现在，它的机器人数量已增加到820台，而且还计划增加更多。

Cheerfully trilling Kenny G tunes to warn any people of their approach, robot carts haul aluminum ingots to an automated elevator, which lifts the blocks of metal to a furnace at the top of a 40-foot-tall Chinese-made machine. Once molten, the aluminum is cast into the shapes of various car body panels and other components. More robot carts, and the occasional human driving a forklift, take the components to a warehouse.

自动平板车一边欢快地播放着肯尼·基的曲子，提醒人们它们正在靠近，一边将铝锭运到自动升降机下，升降机将铝锭吊到一个12米高的熔炉里，熔炉下面是一个中国制造的机器。铝锭熔化后，机器将铝铸造成各种车身面板和其他部件。更多的自动平板车、偶尔也有人工驾驶的叉车将这些零部件送进仓库。

Yet more robots take the panels to the assembly line, where hundreds of robotic arms, working in teams of up to 16, do a complex dance to weld them together into car bodies. The welding area is a so-called dark factory, meaning that the robots can operate without workers and with the lights off.

还有其他机器人将面板运到装配线上，数百个机械臂在装配线上以最多16个一组的方式协同工作，像跳复杂的舞蹈那样将面板焊接成车身。这种焊接区是所谓的“黑灯工厂”，意思是机器人能在没有人工干预的情况下工作，无需开灯。

China’s factories still employ legions of workers. Even with the automation, they are needed to check quality and install some parts that require manual dexterity, like wiring harnesses. There are things cameras and computers cannot do on their own. Before cars are painted, workers still run gloved hands over them and sand smooth any tiny imperfections.

中国的工厂仍雇佣大量工人。即使已经实现自动化，工厂仍需要工人来检查质量，安装一些需要灵巧的手安装的部件，例如汽车线束。仍有些工作是摄像头和计算机无法独立完成的。在汽车喷漆之前，仍需要戴着手套的工人们用砂纸打磨掉车身上任何细微的瑕疵。

Yet some of the later steps of quality control are also being automated with the help of artificial intelligence.

但一些后续的质量控制步骤也在人工智能的帮助下实现自动化。

Near the end of Zeekr’s assembly line, a dozen high-resolution cameras take photos of each car. Computers compare the images to an extensive database of correctly assembled cars and alert factory staff if a discrepancy is found. The task takes seconds to complete.

在极氪装配线的末端，十几台高分辨率摄像机为每辆汽车拍照。计算机将这些图像与一个包含大量正确组装汽车图像的数据库进行比对，如果发现差异，会提醒工厂的工作人员。计算机完成这项任务只需几秒钟。

“Most of our colleagues’ jobs involve sitting in front of a computer monitor,” said Pinky Wu, a Zeekr worker.

“我们大多数同事的工作就是坐在电脑显示器前，”极氪员工平基·吴（音）说。

Zeekr and other Chinese automakers are also using artificial intelligence to design cars and their features more efficiently.

极氪和其他中国汽车制造商也在利用人工智能，更高效地设计汽车及其功能。

Carrie Li, a designer who works at Zeekr’s new office building in Shanghai, uses A.I. to analyze how different interior surfaces will intersect in a car.

设计师卡丽·李（音）在极氪位于上海的新办公楼里工作， 她使用人工智能来分析汽车内部不同表面的相交方式。

“I have more spare time to open my mind and explore for myself which kinds of fashion trends to include in the cars’ interior,” Ms. Li said.

“我有更多的空闲时间来开拓思路，让自己去探索将哪些时尚潮流包括到汽车内饰中去，”李女士说。

载着白手套的工人在装配线末端做车辆检查。仍有些计算机和摄像头无法独立完成的任务。

Car factories in the United States also use automation, but much of the equipment comes from China. Most of the world’s car assembly plants built in the past 20 years were in China, and an automation industry grew up around them.

美国的汽车工厂也使用自动化设备，但大部分设备来自中国。过去20年间，全球新建的汽车组装厂主要集中在中国本土，由此催生了一个庞大的配套自动化产业体系。

Chinese companies also bought overseas suppliers of advanced robotics, like Kuka of Germany, and moved much of their operations to China. When Volkswagen opened an electric car factory a year ago in Hefei, it had only one robot from Germany and 1,074 robots made in Shanghai.

中国企业还收购了一些海外的先进机器人供应商，例如德国的库卡，并将大部分业务迁至中国。大众汽车在合肥的电动汽车厂一年前投产时只有一台机器人来自德国，其他1074台机器人都是在上海制造的。

China’s rapid advance in factory robotics has been propelled from the top down. Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” initiative, which began a decade ago, set out 10 industries in which China sought to be globally competitive. Robotics was one of them.

中国在工厂机器人技术方面的快速发展一直是自上而下推动的。十年前开始的《中国制造2025》计划曾列出十个中国力争在全球具有竞争力的行业，机器人技术是其中之一。

To force the car industry to think about how to use humanoid robots with two arms and two legs, for example, government officials in Beijing told major automakers last year to rent robots and submit videos of them performing tasks in their assembly plants.

例如，为了促使汽车行业思考如何使用有两个胳膊、两条腿的人形机器人，中国政府的官员们去年曾要求各大汽车制造商租一些机器人，把它们在装配厂如何完成任务的视频拍下来提交给政府。

The videos required many takes to get them right. The robots did only basic tasks, like sorting auto parts in a warehouse. But the initiative has helped push the carmakers along.

这些视频需要拍好几次才能达到理想效果。机器人完成的只是一些基本任务，例如对仓库中的汽车零部件进行分类整理。但这项举措推动了汽车制造商在这方面的进展。

In a show of the automation push, the Beijing municipal government held a half-marathon on Saturday for 12,000 runners and 20 humanoid robots. Only six robots finished the race, and the fastest of them took nearly three times as long as the fastest runners. But the event helped draw attention to robots.

为展示对自动化的推进，北京市政府上周六举办了一场半程马拉松比赛，共有1.2万名人类选手和20台人形机器人参加。只有六台机器人最终完成了比赛，最快的机器人用的时间几乎是人类最快者的三倍。但这次比赛帮助引起了人们对机器人的关注。

为了展示自动化技术的进步，北京举办了一场半程马拉松比赛，共有1.2万名人类参赛者和20个人形机器人参加。只有六个机器人最终跑完了全程。

Last month, Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, said in his annual report to the legislature that the country’s plans this year would include an effort to “vigorously develop” intelligent robots. The country’s top economic planning agency announced a $137 billion national venture capital fund for robotics, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.

上个月，中国的二号官员李强总理在向全国人大提交的政府工作报告中说，中国今年的计划包括“大力发展”智能机器人。中国的最高经济规划机构已宣布设立一个一万亿元的国家风险投资基金，用于支持机器人、人工智能，以及其他先进技术的发展。

China’s government-controlled banks have increased lending to industrial borrowers over the past four years by a staggering $1.9 trillion. That has paid for the construction of factories as well as the replacement of equipment at existing ones.

过去四年里，政府控制的国有银行向工业借款人额外发放了惊人的13.6万亿元贷款，用于新厂建设和现有工厂设备的更新。

China’s universities produce about 350,000 mechanical engineering graduates per year, as well as electricians, welders and other trained technicians.

中国的大学每年培养约35万名机械工程专业毕业生，还有电工、焊工，以及其他专业技术人员。

By comparison, American universities graduate about 45,000 mechanical engineers each year.

相比之下，美国的大学每年培养约4.5万名机械工程师。

Jonathan Hurst, the chief robot officer and a co-founder of Agility Robotics, a leading American robot manufacturer, said finding skilled employees had been one of his biggest challenges. As a graduate student in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Mr. Hurst said, he was one of two mechanical engineers.

乔纳森·赫斯特是美国主要的机器人制造商Agility Robotics的联合创始人，也是公司的技术负责人，他说，找到技术熟练的员工一直是他面临的最大挑战之一。赫斯特说，他在匹兹堡的卡内基梅隆大学机器人研究所读研究生时，是仅有的两名机械工程专业的学生之一。

China’s rapid embrace of automation worries some Chinese workers.

中国快速拥抱自动化的做法让一些中国工人担忧。

Geng Yuanjie, 27, drives a forklift at the Zeekr factory, where he has worked for the past two years. He said there were considerably fewer robots at the Volkswagen factory where he previously worked. Surrounded now by robots, he has few co-workers to talk to during his 12-hour shifts.

现年27岁的耿元杰（音）在极氪工厂驾驶叉车，他已在那里工作了两年。他说，自己之前在大众工厂工作，那里的机器人数量要少得多。现在他周围都是机器人，上12小时的班时几乎没有能谈话的同事。

极氪工厂里一辆运送汽车车身部件的自动平板车。中国的自动化进程部分受其人口结构变化趋势的驱动。

“I can feel the trend towards automation,” Mr. Geng said as he watched a robot cart pull a rack of car parts past his forklift. He said that his high school education might not be enough for him to qualify for classes in programming robots, and that he worried he might lose his job someday to a robot.

“我能感受到自动化的趋势，”耿先生看着一个自动平板车拉着汽车零件从他的叉车前驶过时说道。他表示，自己只有高中学历，这也许让他没有足够的资格去学习机器人编程课程，他担心自己的工作有朝一日将被机器人取代。

“It is not just my concern — everyone worries about it,” Mr. Geng said.

“这不只是我的担心，所有人都有这种担心，”耿先生说。

Automation has threatened and even eliminated jobs around the world for more than a century, often slowing automation’s growth. In China, there are fewer obstacles than practically anywhere else. China has no independent labor unions, and Communist Party control leaves almost no room for dissent.

一个多世纪以来，自动化一直对世界各地的工作岗位构成威胁，甚至导致一些岗位消失，这有时会导致自动化发展的放缓。在中国，阻碍自动化发展的障碍几乎比任何其他地方都少。中国没有独立的工会，中共的统治几乎没有给人留下发表异议的空间。

Another factor behind China’s automation drive is the country’s demographic crisis.

中国自动化进程背后的另一个因素是人口危机。

The number of babies born each year has dropped by almost two-thirds since 1987. At the same time, two-thirds of people turning 18 now enroll at a university or college, an educational trajectory that has allowed a new generation to aspire to careers outside factory labor.

中国每年出生的新生儿数量与1987年相比已减少了近三分之二。与此同时，18岁年轻人中现在有三分之二进入高等院校读书，这种接受教育的程度已让新一代人渴望从事工厂劳动以外的工作。

“China’s demographic dividend is over,” said Stephen Dyer, head of the Asia industrial practice at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. “They’re now in a demographic deficit, and the only way out of that is productivity.”

“中国的人口红利已经结束，”咨询公司艾睿铂的亚洲工业主管戴加辉(Stephen Dyer)说。“他们现在面临人口萎缩的问题，唯一的出路是提高生产力。”