NewsChina Vanke, rising wage bills, robot workers, labor shortage
Nov 18, 2015 10:30 PM EST
China's biggest property developer is using robots to sweep floors and guard properties to solve labor shortage and increasing wage bills.
China Vanke is now recruiting robots to do people's work as developers suffer from slow sales and tighter industry margins, according to a report by Reuters. The firm wants to offer the best concierge services to gain more customers, and they hire robots to do those work. Alibaba Group's Taobao now offers robot waiters for only 40,000 Yuan, or $6,300 each.
According to E&T the firm's chairman and property tycoon Wang Shi said the group is undergoing transition that will boost the company's workforce in ten years to one million employees. Forty percent of those workers will be robots, he said. He said the company is shifting from sales to services. This means more workforces are required. The company currently has 40,000 workers.
Ejinsight reported that Vanke recently rolled out driverless cars and patrol robots. The driverless car can carry up to 10 people and tour them across the residential estates of the company. August this year, the company also had eight robot chefs in restaurants where they serve their developments. Wang Shi said the company would open a robot-managed hotel located in Shenzhen.
China's younger workforces are less willing to work in the smaller cities due to the urbanization push and the country's increasing aging population. This leads to a spike in wages in China.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn, is also using robots to fight labor crunch. This firm employs more than a million workers in China. Foxconn head Terry Gou said the company plans to make 1 million robots.
"Nowadays some housing estates or commercial malls cover a large area and feature long paths," said the firm's automation project member Zhang Jinming. "Our driverless cars can solve the problem of transportation within roughly 1 km, and it won't involve any labor cost."
Vanke hasn't given any official figures on how much it plans to invest in its robotics project.