China has held the title of world’s largest robot market for three consecutive years, from 2013 through 2015. Also in 2015, the sales of robots for industrial use in China exceeded the same sales number for Europe, according to a recent report from thepaper.cn.

The same report states that the total number of robots sold in 2015 exceeded 68,000, which is a 30.3 percent rise from 2014.

The report was issued by Song Xiaogang, secretary general of the China Robot Industry Alliance, during the 2016 China International Robot Show (CIROS) that opened on Wednesday in Shanghai.

Specifically, some 36.8 percent of robots sold were deployed in the automobile industry. While the robots working with car manufacturers are mostly foreign brands, domestically-made robots were most frequently used in the metal product manufacturing industry, the report said. The most popular models on the Chinese market are multi-joint robots, with a growing percentage of domestic brands winning larger shares of the market.

“Even the high-end industry is beginning to provide low-end products, indicating the massive popularity of robots in today's market. However, we must prevent this trend from growing more pronounced. Companies should be more innovative in their research, development and application of technologies. They must also avoid pointless competition,” said Wang Weiming, a senior official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, during a forum at CIROS.

According to Wang, there are over 40 robot industrial parks across China and more than 800 large-scale robot manufacturing companies.

Wang Ruixiang, president of the China Machinery Industry Federation, said that the robot industry is a key parameter in judging a country’s mechanical industrialization. China began to list its robot industry as strategically important in 2014, thepaper.cn reported.