China's "Dark Factories": how AI and robots are building a future without people and light

 The industrial revolution is raging in China, which is not visible to the naked eye — because there are simply no lights in these factories. The country is accelerating the transition to "dark factories" — fully automated production facilities where only robots controlled by artificial intelligence work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without breaks or shifts. People, lighting, heating — all this has become unnecessary ballast.

This trend is a response to serious challenges: demographic decline, rising salaries and the outflow of young people from factories. China can no longer rely on cheap labor, and its choice is to become a leader in high—tech manufacturing. "Dark factories" consume less energy, make fewer mistakes, and don't require lunch breaks.

The giants of the industry are already in action. Midea in Shenzhen has launched an air conditioner factory where not a single person in the workshop is visible. The result: +35% of productivity and -70% of rejection. Foxconn, the iPhone assembler, plans to fully automate the assembly of some components by 2027. The Geely plant in Chengdu uses robots for welding, painting and AI cameras for quality control. And Huawei commissioned two monsters in 2025: a fully robotic smartphone factory in Dongguan, where lines are rebuilt in minutes, and a giant automated electric car factory in Chongqing, where assembling a single car can take only 15 minutes, and the entire process is modeled in a digital twin.

The Chinese government sees this as a strategy of technological sovereignty. In the face of sanctions and trade wars, fully automated factories are sustainability. They can work even in isolation, without external shocks. The Ministry of Industry has set an ambitious goal: by 2035, most strategic industries (microelectronics, aircraft manufacturing, medicine) should switch to "smart" production.

However, there is also concern behind this progress: experts estimate that by 2030, up to 30% of manufacturing workers in China may be displaced by robots. The authorities are trying to soften the blow by investing in retraining personnel — the future belongs to AI, cybersecurity and robot maintenance engineers, not assembly line workers. China is building a new model of industrialization: without people, without electricity, but with unprecedented speed, quality and independence.