China’s Lunar New Year humanoid robot dance goes viral with 23 billion views

On Feb. 16, Lunar New Year’s Eve, China Media Group aired its annual Spring Festival Gala, the country’s largest televised event.

Leading humanoid robot startups, Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix, and MagicLab, showcased their robots at the gala, performing kung fu moves, flips, spins, and synchronized jumps alongside human dancers, as reported by Reuters.

Their stable movements, balance, and precise coordination made the performance the most talked-about segment of the show. As of Feb. 18, the event had amassed 23.063 billion views across all domestic platforms, a 37.3% increase compared to last year, according to CGTN. The average number of concurrent viewers was 325 million per minute, with a peak of over 400 million. Live television accounted for 79.29% of the national viewership share, the highest in 13 years.

On digital platforms, live and on-demand views reached 16.207 billion, a 49% increase year-on-year. Nearly 2,000 topics related to the gala trended, generating over 27.12 billion reads. Content on AI and humanoid robots accounted for 20.99% of total engagement, a 5.4-fold increase from the previous year, illustrating the rising interest in tech-driven performances.

Globally, the gala was reported in 85 languages and broadcast in 98 countries. CGTN recorded 2.309 billion readers and 843 million video views.

According to The Guardian, the complex robot movements, such as kung fu and synchronized flips with human artists during prime-time television, showcase China’s latest advances in humanoid robotics, especially as the global AI competition intensifies.

Kyle Chan, a technology researcher at the Brookings Institution, noted that the elaborate performances serve a symbolic purpose: they highlight China’s domestic robot production capabilities and reinforce the message that China is rapidly advancing in the high-tech race.

Zilan Qian, a fellow at the Oxford China Policy Lab, suggested that the widely watched robot performances could help foster a more "techno-optimistic" public, driving faster AI adoption and innovation in China.

However, some experts caution that while the stage performance was meticulously programmed and rehearsed, it does not necessarily indicate that robots are ready to adapt flexibly to industrial or everyday life settings.