The U.S. Can’t Catch Up to China’s Robots by Banning Them

China Races Ahead in Robotics as U.S. Tightens Restrictions

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China Brief:

The U.S. Can’t Catch Up to China’s Robots by Banning Them

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China Brief

A weekly digest of the stories you should be following in China, plus exclusive analysis. Delivered Tuesday.

The U.S. Can’t Catch Up to China’s Robots by Banning Them

Rather than learn from its rival, Washington is trying to shut the door.

!Palmer-James-foreign-policy-columnist20

*Palmer-James-foreign-policy-columnist20*

*James Palmer*

By **James Palmer**, a deputy editor at *Foreign Policy*.

!Humanoid robots are seen from slightly above as they compete in a 100-meter dash on a blue and white track. On the left, a silver and black robot is seen running toward the camera. On the right, a black and red robot has fallen to the ground, its limbs flailing.

*Humanoid robots are seen from slightly above as they compete in a 100-meter dash on a blue and white track. On the left, a silver and black robot is seen running toward the camera. On the right, a black and red robot has fallen to the ground, its limbs flailing.*

Humanoid robots compete in the 100-meter preliminaries of the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Aug. 22. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

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August 25, 2026, 5:22 PM

Welcome to*Foreign Policy*’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: An Olympics-style **robotics tournament** showcases China’s industry dominance, the United States threatens **secondary sanctions** on China over its support for Iran, and the founder of **Evergrande Group** is sentenced to life in prison for fraud and bribery.

Welcome to*Foreign Policy*’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: An Olympics-style **robotics tournament** showcases China’s industry dominance, the United States threatens **secondary sanctions** on China over its support for Iran, and the founder of **Evergrande Group** is sentenced to life in prison for fraud and bribery.

Sign up to receive China Brief in your inbox every Tuesday.

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China Showcases Robotics Prowess

The 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games kicked off in Beijing on Saturday. Now in its second year, the Olympics-style, five-day event pit thousands of robots against each other in jumping, running, dancing, and even horseback riding. (The horses were also robots.)

Though there were some kinks to be worked out, the robots kept breaking records—including Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s 100-meter time—and underscored China’s growing dominance of the global robotics industry.

But don’t expect to see these robots in the United States any time soon: Last month, the Trump administration announced a comprehensive ban on new imports of “advanced robotics devices,” which now must be assembled in the United States and contain at least 65 percent U.S.-made parts. The ban applies to all countries, but it is presumably targeted at China, which dominates robotics manufacturing and was the source of nearly 90 percent of all humanoid robots sold in 2025.

The move is likely to backfire because U.S. manufacturers simply cannot meet the demand for robotics components without massive investment and support. Though there are a few cutting-edge U.S. firms such as Boston Dynamics, the country’s robotics industry is a fraction of the size of China’s.

The ban shows that U.S. President Donald Trump and his officials do not seem to understand that China is genuinely ahead of the United States in certain fields. If Washington wants to catch up, it would be better served by securing access to Chinese technology than by cutting itself off from it.

As a manufacturing country, China has greater incentive to push robotics than the United States, especially given demographic shifts. China is running headlong into the problem of “getting old before it gets rich,” and it hopes that robots can pick up some of the slack. As labor costs rise and China’s working-age population shrinks, factories are automating at extraordinary speed.

Beyond the factory floor, China is concentrating its robotics applications on healthcare and elder care, both sectors that face their own looming labor shortages. In this respect, China is following Japan, which has incorporated robots into elder care for more than a decade—in part as a way to limit the need for immigration.

The scenario that most worries the United States, however, is military use. Humanoid robots are largely impractical for battlefield applications, though some Chinese developers argue that this will change in the next decade. For now, the robots dominating battlefields are drones—which are, as expert Faine Greenwood puts it, “little flying robots” that depend on many of the same technologies.

Unlike the broader robotics industry, where competition is more diffuse, the global civilian drone market is dominated by a single Chinese company, DJI. But other countries have practical battlefield experience that China lacks firsthand knowledge of.

Ukraine, for instance, has held its own against Russia in part by pioneering the manufacture of cheap, practical military drones, often using DJI parts. It has done the same for ground-based battlefield robots—land drones, essentially—where a humanoid form is not particularly useful. Like aerial drones, many of these models combine Chinese hardware with local ingenuity.

For the United States, learning from allies such as Ukraine may be a more effective strategy for catching up