Inside China's effort to replace millions of manufacturing workers with robots

The hitch reflects a much bigger technological challenge facing China's manufacturers today. Wages in Shanghai have more than doubled in the past seven years, and the company that owns the factory, Cambridge Industries Group, faces fierce competition from increasingly high-tech operations in Germany, Japan, and the United States. Last year the government of Guangdong, a province that contains many large manufacturing operations, promised to spend 150 billion equipping factories with industrial robots and creating two new centers dedicated to advanced automation. Despite the challenges, Day Chia-peng, general manager of Foxconn's automation technology development committee, says the company is automating a growing number of tasks on its lines.