FRANS VANDENBOSCH—ack in 2015, living in Suzhou, working in Wuxi, I noticed an overwhelming wave of investments in automation and robotisation. In the automotive industry, automation was already very common. But in small manufacturing enterprises, there were assembly lines with dozens of mostly female workers. These were the young sons and daughters, born in Western China who moved to the more developed cities at the East coast of China. At that time, salaries were moderate, and the quality of the products was not top level. Competition was based on price, not on quality.
But then, almost all of a sudden, I noticed an explosive growth of Chinese automation companies.
