According to the latest data, China’s industrial automation market will continue to show a slight downward trend in 2025, with project market demand declining significantly and OEM market demand recovering.
The following will review the development of China’s automation market in 2025, look forward to the market trends in 2026 and the next few years, and analyze the opportunities and challenges.
China’s automation market will continue to experience negative growth in 2025.
China’s automation market size will be approximately 280 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year decrease of 1%. The market has shown negative growth for three consecutive years.
From the demand side, most OEM market demand still maintains growth, but the growth rate has slowed down. The growth momentum mainly comes from lithium batteries, logistics, packaging, industrial robots and other industries; project-based market demand has declined, and multi-industry project demand represented by chemicals, petrochemicals, and metallurgy continues to weaken.
From the supply side, in the first three quarters of 2025, the supply side of China’s automation market has been stable, and manufacturers’ inventories are basically at normal levels.
In terms of market participation, foreign automation manufacturers continue to deepen their localization layout, while domestic manufacturers continue to promote growth by accelerating technology upgrades.
Since 2025, affected by the rising prices of bulk raw materials such as copper, some automation suppliers plan to increase prices in early 2026.
Under this expectation, many channel vendors have locked in low-price inventory in advance in the fourth quarter of 2025 to maintain profit margins, avoid cost risks, and maintain market competitiveness.
The growth rate of the OEM market is higher than the growth rate of the project market.
In 2025, China’s OEM automation market will be approximately 100 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 2%, and the market growth rate will turn from negative to positive; in 2025, China’s project-based automation market will be approximately 180 billion yuan, with a year-on-year decrease of more than 2%, and the market growth rate will turn from positive to negative.
In 2025, the OEM market will show strong resilience and achieve stable growth driven by new energy and policies.
The driving force for growth mainly comes from the expansion of emerging industries represented by the battery industry, as well as continued investment in areas such as logistics automation stimulated by equipment update policies.
The new energy vehicles and energy storage industries have driven the continued expansion of lithium battery production capacity throughout the year and extended to downstream battery swap stations.
In 2025, China’s cumulative output of power and energy storage batteries will be 1,755.6GWh, a cumulative year-on-year increase of 60.1%.
With state subsidies for logistics automation, leading companies continue to invest in automated sorting and new energy logistics vehicles.
In September 2025, China Post launched the largest unmanned vehicle leasing tender in the country. It plans to purchase a total of 7,000 unmanned vehicles through four years of cooperation, covering small (718 vehicles), medium (4524 vehicles) and large (1758 vehicles) models.
Traditional industries such as packaging have benefited from exports and have grown steadily.
China’s industrial robot output has increased year-on-year, with growth driven mainly by continued investment in downstream automobiles, electronics, lithium batteries and semiconductors.
In 2025, the project-based market will be under overall pressure, and investment in major industries will slow down.
Among them, the power sector has maintained steady growth driven by the transformation of the energy structure; investment in non-ferrous metals and ferrous metals in the mining industry has also shown a steady upward trend.
In petrochemical, chemical, metallurgical and other industries, affected by factors such as declining profits and project delays, terminal demand continues to be sluggish.
Investment in the power industry has grown steadily, driven by UHV construction, distribution network transformation and new energy (wind power, photovoltaic) installations, and thermal power has transformed into a peak-shaving role.
The total power grid investment of State Grid and China Southern Power Grid in 2025 will exceed 825 billion yuan, a record high, of which 112 billion yuan will be invested in UHV projects, a year-on-year increase of 34%.
Demand in the petrochemical and chemical industries has been under pressure throughout the year, due to the dual constraints of surging environmental protection costs and weak recovery in end consumption (real estate).
The metallurgical industry has been directly impacted by the real estate adjustment, demand for construction steel has declined, and the overall performance has been sluggish.
It is expected that China’s automation market will return to the growth track in 2026.
The demand for artificial intelligence has become the core engine driving the growth of the semiconductor market.
With the widespread implementation of artificial intelligence applications and continued investment in data center construction, the demand for logic chips and memory chips has gradually increased.
It is expected that these two types of chips will continue to lead in 2026, driving the growth of the semiconductor market to further accelerate.
The power battery market continues to grow at a rapid pace. Driven by the launch of new projects and continued overseas investment by BYD, CATL, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Everview Lithium Energy and other companies, the industry growth trend is expected to continue in 2026.
The logistics market continues to grow. In 2025, driven by domestic policy subsidies, leading companies will continue to invest in key equipment such as automated sorting systems and new energy logistics vehicles to further stimulate market demand.
In 2026, growth momentum will shift to overseas markets, especially in key areas along the Belt and Road Initiative – mostly Chinese-invested projects, as well as related projects promoted locally in ASEAN and other countries. Overseas markets are expected to become the core growth engine.
The machine tool market continues to grow. With the gradual implementation of a new round of national subsidy policies, the overall domestic demand market has been boosted, forming a positive driving force for industries such as semiconductors, automobiles and general machinery.
At the same time, the rapid evolution of liquid cooling technology represented by AI and the rise of emerging industries such as humanoid robots have also created new growth space for the machine tool industry.
In 2026, with the support of continued policy tightening, the automotive and electronics industries are expected to continue to grow.
Among them, new energy vehicles are developing steadily, and the demand for supporting die-casting post-processing, lidar and other subdivisions will further increase; in addition to benefiting from relevant policies, the 3C electronics industry is also facing development opportunities in the application of emerging technologies such as liquid cooling.
However, project-based demand is obviously under pressure. In 2025, the demand side of China’s chemical industry will be under significant pressure.
Affected by the tightening of environmental protection policies, small and medium-sized chemical companies in key areas such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze River Delta generally face higher investment in rectification, resulting in a significant increase in operating costs.
At the same time, the operating rate of fluorite mines in Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia and other places has dropped from 75% to 60% due to substandard environmental protection, and investment willingness in related fields continues to weaken.
It is expected that weak industry demand will continue in 2026, and overall growth will face continued downward pressure.
To sum up, in China’s automation market in 2025, on one side is the OEM market represented by lithium batteries, logistics, and robots, which is full of enthusiasm and supports growth; on the other side, the traditional chemical industry, metallurgy and other project-based markets continue to cool down due to insufficient demand.
Looking forward to 2026, the warmth is expected to be even more.
AI applications, new energy investment and export-driven growth will become the main driving forces for market recovery.
Although challenges remain, the overall market is expected to end its continuous decline and enter a moderate recovery cycle that focuses more on quality and the application of new technologies.
For companies in the industry, keeping up with the high-growth track and accelerating technological upgrading will be the key to seizing opportunities.
