Dancing Robots Symbolise China’s Technological Dominance

By Petra Williams

Symbolising the dominance of Chinese technological advancements, a team of robots blended technology and culture and danced their way into the hearts of billions of viewers during the 2025 CGTN Spring Gala Festival “Super Night” Television production on the eve of Chinese New Year.

This impressive showcase blending technology and culture, China’s humanoid robots stunned audiences at this year’s Spring Festival Gala. Just days after the DeepSeek AI trend swept across tech circles, 16 robots from Unitree Robotics took center stage, dancing alongside human performers.  

Sixteen robots from Unitree Robotics took to the stage alongside their human counterparts for a fun performance featuring the Chinese folk dance Yangge, popular in rural and urban areas of northern China. The advanced humanoid droids adorned with bright, flashy colours moved in perfect synchronisation with the human dancers. 

The robots also impressively performed the “handkerchief spin,” a signature move in Yangge that typically requires great skill and practice. Their mechanical arms twirled and tossed the handkerchiefs with precision to the music, stunning the audience.

Unitree Robotics, the Chinese company behind these humanoid robots, revealed that the robots used in the performance are part of their “Fuxi” series.

These robots are equipped with 360-degree panoramic depth perception technology, which allows them to navigate their surroundings with precision and to perform complex movements like the waist-twisting and leg-kicking steps typical of the Yangge dance. The advanced AI algorithms allowed the robots to “understand” the music, adapting their movements based on rhythm and tempo. 

This technology was combined with high-precision 3D laser SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) positioning, which enabled the robots to perform at the Spring Festival Gala without missing a beat.

The robot dance was among the many memorable on-stage performances during the hours-long variety show broadcast on the eve of the Chinese New Year. The annual extravaganza is watched by billions worldwide and is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most-watched TV program.

The annual television production, also known as “Chunwan,” was first broadcast in 1983 and is seen as a significant cultural symbol for Spring Festival celebrations in China. It integrates traditional culture with innovative means to entertain audiences on the eve of the Chinese New Year.

The robots’ performance followed closely on the heels of the recent release of Chinese DeepSeek AI, which quickly gained global attention as a strong, more cost-effective competitor to ChatGPT and similar platforms in the United States.

These developments are noteworthy given the extensive ban by the US on the export of a wide range of cutting-edge chips, semiconductor-manufacturing equipment, high-bandwidth computer memory, and other technology components to China-designed.  

“to impair [China’s] ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo had said in a statement when the band was imposed during Biden’s administration.  China has responded with the rapid development of its indigenous technology industry.

The rapid pace of development in China and the anticipated swift response from the US, which can rely on more strong-arm policies from the recently installed Trump administration, could very well yield positive benefits for users around the world unless the competition results in the technologydriven war of restrictions which would be inimical to global technological growth.