Hangzhou Takes the Lead: Birth of China’s First Local Regulation for Embodied Intelligent Robots
On December 29, 2025, the 31st meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th Hangzhou Municipal People’s Congress voted to adopt the Regulations of Hangzhou Municipality on Promoting the Development of the Embodied Intelligent Robot Industry (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations). This marks the birth of China’s first local regulation promoting the development of the embodied intelligent robot industry in Hangzhou.
Focusing on key links such as core technology research, industrial ecosystem construction, scenario application opening, and social governance coordination, the Regulations provide solid legal protection and policy guidance for Hangzhou to build itself into “China’s No.1 City for the Embodied Intelligent Robot Industry”.
In terms of industrial manufacturing development, the Regulations stipulate that efforts should be focused on key fields such as automobile manufacturing, industrial logistics, and 3C manufacturing to carry out scenario application tests of embodied intelligent robots. It will give full play to the advantages of embodied intelligent robots in flexible manufacturing, human-robot collaboration, and intelligent decision-making, and improve the intelligence level of factory production processes.
Embodied intelligent robots represent a cutting-edge direction of the integration of artificial intelligence and robot technology. Simply put, they equip AI “brains” with physical “bodies”, enabling them to perceive the environment, understand tasks, and respond accordingly, achieving a key leap from “cognition” to “action”.
Multi-City Race: Distinctive Industrial Layouts Across Key Cities
Beyond China’s first local regulation, multiple key cities nationwide including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing have launched distinctive development plans for the embodied intelligent robot industry, forming a clear competitive pattern.
In August 2025, the Several Measures of Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone for Promoting the Innovative Development of Embodied Intelligent Robots proposed to promote full coverage of typical application scenarios in more than ten fields such as education and teaching, medical and health care, government services, and commercial communities. Notably, the mature application of high-precision catheter assembly machines in the medical field has laid a solid technical foundation for the R&D and manufacturing of embodied intelligent robots in medical scenarios—these machines’ ultra-precise assembly capabilities can be migrated to the production of core components of medical robots, ensuring the safety and reliability of their operations in minimally invasive surgeries and other precise medical tasks. It aims to gather over 100 advantageous enterprises in embodied intelligence, attract more than 1,000 high-end talents, form a mass production capacity of 10,000-level embodied intelligent robots, build a real-world embodied intelligence dataset of 10-million scale, and achieve initial results in constructing a highland for the embodied intelligent robot industry.
In July 2025, the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government issued the Implementation Plan for the Development of Shanghai’s Embodied Intelligence Industry, proposing that by 2027, the scale of Shanghai’s core embodied intelligence industry will exceed 50 billion yuan. It will promote the coordinated development of industrial clusters and chains, attract and cultivate a number of high-quality enterprises and industry ecosystem-leading enterprises. For enterprises selling or leasing embodied intelligent robots, rewards of up to 5% of the contract value (capped at 5 million yuan) will be granted in accordance with regulations.
In June 2025, the Nanjing Municipal Government held an executive meeting to review the Action Plan for the Development of Nanjing’s Embodied Intelligent Robot Industry (2025–2027). It proposed that by 2027, the comprehensive strength of Nanjing’s embodied intelligent robot industry will rank among the top in China, with the core industry scale exceeding 10 billion yuan.
On March 3, 2025, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Science, Technology and Innovation issued the Action Plan for Technological Innovation and Industrial Development of Shenzhen’s Embodied Intelligent Robots (2025–2027). It proposed to focus on supporting the research of key core technologies such as core components of embodied intelligent robots, AI chips, bionic dexterous hands, foundational and vertical domain large models, and ontology control. Major science and technology projects will be organized and implemented in phases and batches through mechanisms such as the “challenge-based bidding system”, project manager system, and owner system. By 2027, the comprehensive strength of Shenzhen’s embodied intelligent robot industry will reach an internationally leading level.
Industry Significance: Legislation Drives In-Depth Development & Technological Competition
Hangzhou’s legislation is a symbol of the current industrial upsurge moving towards institutionalization and in-depth development. From Hangzhou’s promotion of industrial ecosystem construction through legislation to the differentiated layouts of cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing in terms of target scale, application scenarios, and core technologies, embodied intelligent robots have become a new focus of cutting-edge technological competition in China.
