BEIJING - China's most-watched TV show, the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, will be viewed later on Monday as a showcase for the country's cutting-edge industrial policy and Beijing's push to dominate humanoid robots and the future of manufacturing.

Four rising humanoid robot startups - Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab - are set to showcase their products in the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.

The hype surrounding China's humanoid robot sector comes as major players including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year and domestic artificial intelligence startups release a raft of frontier models during the lucrative nine-day Lunar New Year public holiday.

Last year's gala stunned viewers with 16 full-size Unitree humanoids twirling handkerchiefs and dancing in unison with human performers.

Unitree's founder met President Xi Jinping weeks later at a high-profile tech symposium - the first of its kind since 2018.

Xi has met five robotics startup founders in the past year, comparable to the four electric vehicle and four semiconductor entrepreneurs he met in the same timeframe, giving the nascent sector unusual visibility.

The CCTV show, which drew 79% of live TV viewership in China last year, has for decades been used to highlight Beijing's tech ambitions including its space programme, drones and robotics, said Georg Stieler, Asia managing director and head of robotics and automation at technology consultancy Stieler.

"What distinguishes the gala from comparable events elsewhere is the directness of the pipeline from industrial policy to prime-time spectacle," Stieler said.

"Companies that appear on the gala stage receive tangible rewards in government orders, investor attention, and market access."

CHINA'S STRENGTHS

Behind the spectacle of robots running marathons and executing kung-fu kicks and backflips, China has positioned robotics and AI at the heart of its next-generation AI+ manufacturing strategy, betting that productivity gains from automation will offset pressures from its ageing workforce.

"Humanoids bundle a lot of China's strengths into one narrative: AI capability, hardware supply chain, and manufacturing ambition. They are also the most 'legible' form factor for the public and officials," said Beijing-based tech analyst Poe Zhao.

"In an early market, attention becomes a resource."

China accounted for 90% of the roughly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped globally last year, far ahead of U.S. rivals including 

Tesla's Optimus, according to research firm Omdia. Morgan Stanley projects that China's humanoid sales will more than double to 28,000 units this year.

Elon Musk has said he expects his biggest competitor to be Chinese companies as he pivots Tesla toward a focus on embedded AI and Optimus. "People outside China underestimate China, but China is an ass-kicker next level," he said last month.

So far, the real-world rollout has been limited to demonstration projects, often with support. Galbot, for example, has a contract to use its humanoid robots in factories run by battery giant CATL 300750.SZ, one of its major investors. UBTech 9880.HK won a government contract last year to send humanoid robots to work in logistics and support roles at a border crossing with Vietnam.

Chinese startups are also rapidly iterating AI models to train humanoid "brains", using real-world data collection to improve their environmental perception and understanding of natural language commands.

Analysts will watch Monday's performance for innovations including multi-robot coordination, fault recovery and hand-related tasks like fine-object manipulation.

"A robot doing a backflip is still far more spectacular than one carefully gripping a plastic cup of water — even though the latter is technically much more demanding," Stieler said.

-Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed and Neil Fullick/Reuters