Warum westliche Führungskräfte, die China besuchen, verängstigt zurückkommen – Robotik hat Peking in vielen Branchen in eine beherrschende Stellung katapultiert

From the article

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.

After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition.

“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.

“We are in a global competition with China, [and it’s not just EVs](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/06/chinese-carmakers-uk-sales-rocket-tenfold/). And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”

Also from the article

Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.

“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.

“The process was so heavily automated that there were no workers on the manufacturing side, just a small number who were there to ensure the plant was working.

“You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”

Its the problem with focusing on hording wealth and investments consolidation rather than actual reinvestment into people and innovation.