Fuoshan, China's Southern province of Guangdong, plans to introduce over 20,000 robot machines to replace human workers in two years, Lu Yi, mayor of the city, announced Tuesday. 

He made the announcement in a local innovation promotion campaign, saying that currently the city uses just over 3,000 robot machines. It shows robot machines have a huge market potential in the city.

Study shows that manual laborers and robot machines have a huge difference in terms of cost. If ten welders are hired , the manual labor will cost 95,500 yuan ($15,976) a year while automation only costs 17,240 yuan ($2,873).

As a heavy industrial city, Fushan has a great demand for robot machines. To be specific, the city needs over 2,000 robot machines in the porcelain and building materials industry, about 1,000 in the aluminum processing industry, 1,500 in the automobile industry, and 3,000 in mechanical machinery area.

The mayor also said that 3000 enterprises in the city will replace people with robot machines by 2017.

(Source: Caixin.com)