Rise of the Machines: When Humanoid Robots Perform Kung Fu on the Spring Festival Gala
Rise of the Machines: When Humanoid Robots Perform Kung Fu on the Spring Festival Gala
During the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, viewers witnessed a strange sight: 24 humanoid robots performing kung fu in sync on stage – Shaolin boxing, drunken boxing, and even nunchucks.
This wasn't a science fiction movie. This was a prime-time program on national television, reaching nearly a billion viewers.
A year earlier, these same robots were stumbling through the Beijing Half Marathon, falling, breaking limbs, with engineers chasing after them in a sweat. Back then, it looked like a farce. Now they're doing kung fu.
What happened?
A Qualitative Leap in One Year
The speed of humanoid robot progress is beyond "exponential."
"In just one year, they have evolved from robots to 'humans'." — @XH_Lee23
This statement is, of course, an exaggeration. But the direction of the exaggeration is correct. From the 2025 Spring Festival Gala to the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, China's humanoid robots evolved from "being able to stand up" to "being able to do kung fu." This is not incremental improvement, but a generational leap.
What were the key changes?
Autonomy. Unitree's G1 robot achieved "the world's first fully autonomous humanoid robot cluster kung fu performance." No remote control, no preset trajectories, the robots coordinate their movements themselves.
Speed. Previous robots were slow and stiff, like watching slow-motion replays. Now the movements are "smooth" and close to human speed.
Coordination. 24 robots perform simultaneously, with synchronized movements. This is not a simple task – each robot is adjusting in real-time while maintaining coordination with the whole.
This is not a breakthrough in a single technology, but the maturation of the entire technology stack.
China's Manufacturing Advantage
If humanoid robots are a race, China has already secured the best position on the starting line.
The data is clear:
- Chinese manufacturers shipped 85-90% of the world's humanoid robots in 2025
- There are over 150 humanoid robot companies in China
- China has built 40 robot training centers
- China has applied for 7,705 related patents in the past five years, 5 times more than the United States
"The most complete humanoid supply chain in the world is in China." — @ShangguanJiewen
This is not accidental. China has mature supply chains for the core components of humanoid robots – motors, reducers, sensors. While American companies are still looking for suppliers for one robot, Chinese companies can assemble dozens at a time.
This supply chain advantage will reinforce itself. The larger the scale, the lower the cost, the larger the scale.
Two Paths
The development of humanoid robots is diverging into two paths.
High-end path: Tesla's Optimus, Figure AI, Boston Dynamics. Each robot costs tens of thousands of dollars, targeting industrial-grade applications. Tesla even plans to establish an "Optimus Academy" to train millions of robots with simulations and then deploy tens of thousands in the real world.
Low-cost path: China's open-source projects. Berkeley Humanoid Lite, costing less than $5,000, can be manufactured on entry-level 3D printers. Modular design, fix it if it's broken, modify it if you want.
"Humanoid robots should not be black boxes or budget-busters!" — @t_k_233
These two paths are not contradictory. High-end robots push the boundaries of technology, while low-end robots expand the scope of applications. Like the mobile phone market – flagship phones define what is possible, while cheap phones define what is popular.
The Significance of the Showcase
Why have robots perform kung fu on the Spring Festival Gala?
The most direct explanation: This is a national-level technology demonstration. The Spring Festival Gala is China's most-watched program, and choosing to showcase humanoid robots on this stage sends a clear message – this is a technological direction we value.
A deeper meaning: This is a large-scale social experiment. Letting nearly a billion people see robots doing kung fu will change public perception of robots. From "that's something in the lab" to "that's something I can see on TV."
"Are we building helpers... or replacements?" — @CultureExploreXThis question has not been answered. But the Spring Festival Gala's showcase makes this question urgent. When robots perform traditional martial arts—a symbol of Chinese culture—on stage, they are no longer just tools, but "participants" in a sense.
Breakthroughs in Training
The core difficulty with humanoid robots is not manufacturing, but training.
A robot can have perfect hardware, but if it doesn't know how to use it, it's just a pile of metal and motors. The traditional training method is programming—humans tell the robot what to do at each step. But this method is not scalable. Humans cannot write instructions for every possible scenario.
The new methods are "imitation learning" and "reinforcement learning."
"At Fourier Robots, humanoid robots are learning household tasks through teletraining. Operators wear brain-computer interfaces and exoskeleton arms. Neural intent and physical motion are streamed into the robot as training signals." — @xmaquina
This is the direction of the future: humans do it once, and robots learn it. No programming is needed, just demonstration.
Tesla's solution is more radical: train millions of robots in a simulated environment, let them try all possible tasks in the virtual world, and then transfer the learned abilities to the real world. This is called "sim-to-real."
The Pursuit of Practicality
The robots doing Kung Fu on the Spring Festival Gala are cool. But what useful things can they do?
This is a fair question. Currently, the "killer application" of most humanoid robots is still demonstration. They can dance, perform, do live broadcasts—but these are "seemingly useful" rather than "truly useful."
What are the truly useful scenarios?
- Dangerous environments: Nuclear power plants, chemical plants, post-disaster rescue
- Repetitive labor: Logistics sorting, factory assembly
- Service industry: Hotel service, restaurant food delivery
- Home assistant: Cleaning, cooking, taking care of the elderly
The commonality of these scenarios: the need for human-shaped robots to enter human-designed environments. Wheeled robots cannot climb stairs, and quadruped robots cannot operate human tools. Only humanoid robots can seamlessly integrate into the human world.
The problem is cost. A humanoid robot capable of doing these jobs currently costs tens of thousands of dollars. Economically, it is still cheaper to hire humans.
The Geopolitical Perspective
Humanoid robots are not purely a technical issue, but also a geopolitical issue.
"Elon Musk says with the absence of breakthrough innovations in the US, China will utterly dominate." — @niccruzpatane
This judgment may be too pessimistic, but the direction is correct. The competition for humanoid robots is not only a technology competition, but also a supply chain competition, a manufacturing capacity competition, and a capital investment competition.
In these dimensions, China is currently leading. The United States has advantages in software and AI, but hardware and manufacturing are concentrating in China.
Interestingly, Elon Musk's response:
"U.S. companies need to move now on robotics cooperation with China." — @mitchpresnick
This is not a politically correct statement, but it may be a pragmatic judgment. In the field of humanoid robots, the cost of complete decoupling is losing the market.
Recursive Imagination
Tesla has proposed a more radical vision: self-replicating robots.
"Tesla Optimus Robots will build themselves in the future: Recursive Multiplicable Exponential." — @niccruzpatane
The logic of this idea is: if robots can build robots, production capacity will grow exponentially. No more factories are needed, just more robots.
This sounds like science fiction. But technological history tells us that today's science fiction may be tomorrow's reality. Computers used to be room-sized machines, owned only by governments and universities. Now everyone has one in their pocket.## The Role of Humans
As robots become capable of doing more and more, what will humans do?
Optimistic view: Robots liberate humans, allowing us to focus on more creative and meaningful work.
Pessimistic view: Robots replace humans, causing mass unemployment and social unrest.
The reality may lie somewhere in between. Some jobs will be replaced, and some new jobs will be created. The transition process will be painful, but it may ultimately lead to higher productivity.
"Obviously lots of jobs will remain post-AGI for awhile like: plumber, electrician, construction, nurse, caretaker... That is until humanoid robots that run on AI takeover those too (10-20 years?)" — @levelsio
This timeline may be accurate. Humanoid robots are already very human-like in demonstrations, but it will take another 10-20 years to replace blue-collar jobs on a large scale in reality.
Bottom Line
The robots doing Kung Fu on the Spring Festival Gala are a symbol.
It symbolizes humanoid robots moving from the laboratory to the public eye. It symbolizes China's ambition in the field of robotics. It symbolizes that technological progress is accelerating.
But symbols are not reality. The real questions are: When will these robots be able to do something truly useful? When will the cost come down to mass adoption? When will training reach true general intelligence?
The Spring Festival Gala stage is small. The bigger stage is the whole world.
This article is based on an analysis of 100 discussions about Humanoid Robots on X/Twitter on February 18, 2026.
