Responses on Chinese language social media to state broadcaster CCTV’s annual Spring Pageant Gala final week had been lower than uniformly rapturous. A deleted publish from WeChat public account Promoting Apricot Blossoms described the published as a brain-pulverizing ideological blender, and inspired others to disregard it somewhat than watch it merely to gasoline on-line snark. When CCTV reminded viewers that it owns the IP rights to the present, a touch upon Douyin likened this to placing a lock on a septic tank.
One other critique got here from authorized blogger Li Yuchen, who dismissed the Gala’s flashy robotic acrobatics as little greater than a sequence of very costly adverts. “Each New 12 months’s Eve, the Spring Pageant exhibits you ways superior we’re,” he wrote. “What they don’t present you is what any of this progress has to do with you.” (Promoting Apricot Blossoms expressed the same sense of disconnection, writing that “the 12 months’s most-watched chive parade” merely confirmed “the day by day lives of Chinese language individuals pounded and pinched into form like festive New 12 months dumplings.”) Li in contrast the conditions of China’s robots and its people, concluding that robots are honored as flagbearers for China’s financial output whereas residing “huminerals” are handled like expendable sources to gasoline the machine.
Li made veiled references to trafficking of girls in rural areas—”x县的她们，被tie L”—and employees with pneumoconiosis—”尘f病”—changing characters with pinyin or initials in an effort to evade scans for delicate key phrases. The publish was censored, nonetheless.
On this 12 months’s Chinese language New 12 months’s Eve, 4 robotics corporations made a joint look as a part of CCTV’s Spring Pageant Gala.
Magic Atom, Galaxy Normal, Unitree Expertise, and Songyan Energy had dozens of robots turning somersaults, doing kung fu, and putting horse stances on the principle stage in Beijing. On the satellite tv for pc venue in Hefei, iFlytek androids carried out tangma [a stylized operatic representation of horseriding], and struck dramatic poses with sleeves flying. In Shenyang, Siasun’s heavy-duty robotic [camera] arms held regular within the sub-zero temperatures with sub-millimetre precision.
Cai Ming carried out a skit with a robotic, 30 years on [from a 1996 Gala performance in which she played a custom-made robot wife].
The bullet feedback flooded in: “Wonderful!” “I may watch these robots all evening!”
The value of entry for a partnership spot for robots on the Spring Pageant Gala can quantity to tens and even tons of of hundreds of thousands of yuan. These 4 corporations clamored to look onstage as a result of Unitree “broke out” finally 12 months’s Gala, multiplying its valuation a number of occasions over.
This isn’t a gala; it’s a product launch.
I’ve tried to consider the Spring Pageant Gala robots when it comes to the predicaments going through peculiar individuals:
Robots can do somersaults as a result of their joint actions are managed all the way down to the millimeter; meals supply employees have their pay docked in the event that they’re a couple of minutes late.
Robots don’t thoughts the chilly, and might work in probably the most frigid temperatures; aged Hebei villagers can’t afford to warmth their properties this winter.
Robots may be freely purchased and bought at clearly marked costs; in x county, ladies are put in ir0n ch@!ns and “sheltered.”
When robots break down, there are engineers on name to restore them; when a miner’s lungs fail because of pneumoc**iosis, there’s nobody to repair that.
A robotic’s spot within the Spring Pageant Gala prices 100 million yuan or extra; yearly, there are particular enforcement campaigns to handle the difficulty of unpaid wages to migrant employees, however the issue by no means will get solved.
Robots include homeowners’ certificates, security manuals, and after-sales service; for 84 million gig employees, even an employment contract is past attain.
Galaxy Normal’s robots within the Gala had been geared up with embodied AI fashions so they may work together with individuals in actual time. Magic Atom’s MagicBot Z1 has 24 levels of freedom, 130 Newton-meters (Nm) of torque, and 320º of joint movement, and might repeatedly get well from falls and do backflips.
They’ve emotion recognition programs that may distinguish human feelings akin to happiness, anger, sorrow, and pleasure.
[…] There are greater than 84 million gig employees throughout the nation: meals supply riders, bundle couriers, and rideshare drivers. Lots of them spend lengthy durations uncovered to visitors hazards and bodily pressure. One food-delivery rider instructed an interviewer: “I don’t dare set my cellphone to silent, day or evening, in case I miss an order and get a foul assessment. Even after I go to sleep, I’ve nightmares about dashing to make deliveries in time.”
There’s no system to acknowledge their feelings, solely to detect in the event that they run late.
Riders have reported pay deductions after being a couple of minutes late, and heavier ones if somebody information a grievance. Within the occasion of a visitors accident, the platform’s first response is to test whether or not the order was delivered.
Most gig employees don’t have employment contracts. Social insurance coverage is a luxurious. They’re not “staff,” they’re “companions,” so the platforms don’t must assume the duties of an employer.
[…] At first of each winter, there’s one other spherical of “particular winter campaigns to sort out unpaid wages.” Final November, it was the “November 2025-Spring Pageant 2026 Complete Marketing campaign to Rectify Wage Arrears.”
The cycle continues, 12 months after 12 months: a crackdown, extra wage theft, then one other crackdown …
This final marketing campaign ran proper up till the beginning of the Spring Pageant Gala, with its backflipping robots.
Then it’s: “Unpaid wages? Loosen up, it’s New 12 months! Cash or no cash, it’s time to go residence and eat your dumplings.”
The movement of migrant employees between provinces fell from 78.67 million in 2014 to 68.40 million in 2024—down 10 million in 10 years.
It’s not that they don’t need to migrate in the hunt for work. It’s that it doesn’t make sense now. The pay-off from working in one other province has fallen, however the prices and risks haven’t. Even in smaller cities, there are meals to be delivered and gigs to be labored. It won’t be a dream job, however no less than you don’t must uproot your self out of your hometown for the sake of a paycheck that would evaporate at any second.
Transferring a robotic is simple: field it up, ship it off, roll it out. It gained’t get homesick, or fear about individuals and issues it left behind, or have youngsters ready for it again residence.
What number of left-behind youngsters can we even have now? It’s a very long time since anybody’s bothered to replace the quantity.
Each New 12 months’s Eve, the Spring Pageant exhibits you ways superior we’re. We’ve bought 5G, AI, quantum computing, and humanoid robots. The core applied sciences are homegrown and below home management.
What they don’t present you is what any of this progress has to do with you.
Robots have gotten extra agile, whereas employees have gotten extra oppressed by algorithms. Expertise gallops ahead, whereas peculiar individuals get left behind.
Onstage, man and machine dance collectively; offstage, the people are worse off than the robots.
The quantity that a spot is prepared to spend on backflipping robots displays the quantity of thought it would spare for actual individuals.
At this 12 months’s Gala, the robots had been extra lifelike than ever.
They will dance, communicate, and acknowledge feelings … they’ll be properly taken care of.
And the individuals?
They will run, they’ll carry, and after they break, they’ll get replaced, and nobody will care.
So ultimately, are robots changing into extra human, or are people changing into extra like draft animals?
Or to place it one other approach: Who’s handled with care on this nation, and who’s an expendable useful resource? [Chinese]
