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Ben Jiang

China is looking to give every humanoid manufactured in the country a digital identity, as it seeks promote growth in the rapidly growing sector through establishing industry standards and strengthening regulation.
The country launched a national initiative on Friday, dubbed the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform, to assign human-shaped and artificial intelligence-driven bipedal robots unique codes. The numbers will then be used to track the robots throughout their lifecycle, from production through to recycling, according to a report by the country’s state broadcaster CCTV.
The programme is led by the Humanoid Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Standardization (HEIS) committee under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Authorities said the system is designed to ensure products can be traced in order to monitor for risks, as China pushes to regulate the fast-developing industry, according to the CCTV report.
China also released guidelines for lifecycle management of humanoids and instructions for how the ID should be used.
The guidelines apply to all stakeholders across the humanoid industry and supply chain, including manufacturers, service providers, sellers, users and recycle facilities, Yu Xiuming, deputy head at the China Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI) said.
The move comes as China looks to accelerate development of humanoid robots, with policymakers increasingly promoting standards and industrial coordination to support the emerging sector.
CESI’s Yu said that China aims to use the ID system to address core issues in the humanoid robot industry related to safety, oversight and governance, and to accelerate the deployment of humanoid robot for use.

Each humanoid robot ID code consists of four parts, including a two-digit national code for tracking cross-border shipments and sales, and a four-digit manufacturer code to identify the Chinese firm responsible for making the robot.
A six-digit product model code will identify the robot type and a 17-digit serial code will distinguish individual units.
The national initiative already applies to over 100 Chinese humanoid manufacturers and over 28,000 robots across 200 models have been assigned a digital ID.
China’s humanoid industry has been undergoing rapid development, according to a January research by market consultancy International Data Corporation (IDC).
The global humanoid robot market expanded 508 per cent last year, with around 18,000 units of total global shipments, IDC said in the research, noting that Chinese vendors are “taking a leading position supported by a comprehensive industrial supply chain”.
Humanoid robots developed by Chinese manufacturers excelled the second annual Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon held in Beijing last month which pitted human and robot runners against each other.
A humanoid finished the race faster than any human has ever run the same distance in history.
The robot finished the race in 50 minutes 26 seconds, about six minutes faster than Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo’s time when he set the most recent world record for the distance.
The winning humanoid, dubbed “Lightning”, was developed by Chinese smartphone and gadget maker Honor, a spin-off from Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Honor’s Lightning finished the race nearly two hours ahead of last year’s robot champion “Tiangong”, which completed the 2025 race in two hours and 40 minutes, a speed difference that highlights the rapid advances the Chinese robotics industry has made in only a year.


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The national initiative will give every bipedal humanoid a unique code, like a national ID but for robots


The national initiative will give every bipedal humanoid a unique code, like a national ID but for robots.


China to give every humanoid robot a digital ID in push to boost industry standards

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The national initiative will give every bipedal humanoid a unique code, like a national ID but for robots

The national initiative will give every bipedal humanoid a unique code, like a national ID but for robots