This is shockingly racist and unarguably far worse than anything Chinese officials said about Japan: they never insulted the Japanese people as a whole whereas this Japanese ambassador is implying the Chinese **as a people** are dirty and badly mannered.

This is stunning. It really shows that, at this stage, the real competition in humanoid robotics isn't between the US and China, but Shenzhen vs Shanghai vs Hangzhou. By my count there's already 35 strong humanoid robot companies in China, including the global leaders in sales and volume. Several of these companies already have commercialized robots actually deployed at scale (e.g. anyone can buy Unitree's G1 robot for $13.5k today: On its end, the US has, arguably, 6 humanoid companies or products: - Tesla (Optimus) - Figure AI - Agility Robotics (Digit) - Boston Dynamics (Atlas) - Apptronik (Apollo) - Sanctuary AI (Phoenix) But: - Zero have commercialized products that consumers can actually buy today - Zero have achieved mass production - All are either in prototype phase, internal testing, or limited industrial pilots Which means that stunningly, the city of Shenzhen alone, with 8 humanoid robot companies, probably outcompetes the entire US industry today. If the US can't compete with a single Chinese city, then clearly the race is between Chinese cities. Europe, meanwhile, true to form, is basically not even in the race at all.