Mountainous Guizhou Province, the global matcha powerhouse in southwest China, is advancing its endeavor in quadrupling the production and sales volume of the powdered green tea to 10,000 tons by 2030.
Guizhou produced and sold 2,500 tons of matcha in 2025, ranking first in China, with its tea products being exported to 54 other countries and regions.
Jiangkou County, located at the foot of Guizhou's UNESCO-listed Fanjing Mountain, was once a poverty-stricken area, but is now a pioneer in the field of matcha production. This turnaround began in 2017, when Gui Tea Group introduced cutting-edge industrial technology to this area.
As more orders came to Gui Tea Group, the company needed more farmers to supply the tea leaves. That's when local villager Chen Jiqiao got a call.
"I was working on a construction site, and I got this call," Chen recalled.
A local official and the enterprise provided a contract, which guaranteed purchases as long as his leaves met the standard.
Within two years from 2024, he had become the top matcha grower in his village, with his income growing fast.
Officials in Jiangkou County like Liu Sha are trying to engage more farmers into the business, which has put more real money into people's pockets.
"With matcha, you can harvest all five mu (one-third of a hectare) your land. At four yuan per half kilo, that's over 10,000 yuan a year," she said to a villager.
"At this stage, you could say that matcha has changed the fate of tea farmers in our region," Liu said.
Local authority said matcha has boosted incomes for more than 110,000 tea farmers and workers in the region.
Chen's daughters used to see him only twice a year when he was a migrant worker working away.
Now, the kids can pester him to take them out to play whenever they like.
"Being with my family is far better than working away. The children feel more secure," Chen said.
Global matcha powerhouse in southwest China's Guizhou aims to quadruple production
Facilitated by favorable nation-level policies and strategies, Chinese businesses are working to promote large-scale commercialization of humanoids, propelling humanoid robots out of laboratories and into factories, family homes and classrooms.
Since embodied intelligence was highlighted in China's 2025 Government Work Report as a new engine of economic growth, humanoid robots have been flexing their skills for years, running marathons, fighting close-range battles, and performing stunts on television.
Beyond their position as a technology spectacle, humanoids are clocking in for real jobs in China, and robot data centers are providing them their compulsory trainings.
One of the robot schools is the data factory of Agibot, one of China's major humanoid producers, in Shanghai. Resembling a miniature "human world," trainers are teaching robots all kinds of daily and professional tasks, and it's open sourced. The data generated here can be used by many other companies to train their own robots.
Nearly 1,000 humanoids are learning their tricks here every day. By guiding each motion of the robots, human trainers are generating what the engineers call the "expert data" for the robots to master their skills.
"I think that data, hardware and algorithms improve together in a positive spiral. The more data we have, the better our models and algorithms will be. In this way, we will have better means to enable the entire community of developers to make greater contributions, and to enable the overall technological development of the community to become faster," said Wang Sukai, an algorithm expert from Agibot.
Their open approach is paying off. Global shipments of humanoid robots surged to around 18,000 units in 2025, more than five times the figure from the year before, with Chinese firms dominating the market. Agibot alone shipped over 5,100 units last year, which is nearly 40 percent of the global total.
"China now has an 'engineer dividend' built upon the 'dividend of human resources'. Our teams bring strong innovation experience from making smart vehicles, drones, laser radars and more. We also benefit from very remarkable advantages in terms of a complete industrial chain. The sensor ecosystems from EV, sensor, and computing power can be recalibrated for robotics. We get rent discounts and talent subsidies, too. And finally, our customers joined us early, and we are now experiencing rapid growth with more stable products," said Wang Chuang, president of Agibot General Business Division.
And as demand grows, schools are rethinking what they teach. In Shanghai, vocational schools are introducing robotic engineering programs.
"At the national level, AI education is being promoted with great efforts. Exposing human resources early to embodied intelligence gives them a deeper understanding and stronger ability to apply it later on," said Yin Hua, principal of Shanghai Fengxian Secondary Vocational School.
Regarding the widespread concerns on unemployment, analysts argue that AI and robots are not exterminating jobs, but facilitates a technology up-skilling.
"We are designing these robots to address a fundamental challenge within the human society. We are having smaller families. We are having lesser young folks that can be dedicated to sort of a heavy blue-collar jobs. As long as we have sufficient coverage from a policy standpoint, from an up-skilling standpoint. And we are already seeing some enterprises very keen to train up their existing workforces. We are on a right track," said Su Lian Jye, chief AI analyst of technology research and advisory group Omdia.
Chinese companies seek to propel humanoids into factories, homes
