On the eve of the Lunar New Year in 2026, four robotics companies teamed up to perform on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala.
Magic Atom, Galaxy General, Unitree Technology, and Songyan Power, with dozens of robots performing somersaults, kung fu, and stances at the Beijing main venue. In the Hefei sub-venue, the bionic robot from iFLYTEK sang the Peking Opera “Tang Ma”, with a graceful sleeve display. In the Shenyang sub-venue, the heavy-duty mechanical arm from SIASUN, with a precision of ±1 millimeter, remained still in sub-zero temperatures.
Cai Ming, after thirty years, once again collaborated with “robots”.
Bullet screen comments: “Awesome” and “Watched robots all night”.
A Spring Festival Gala robot collaboration seat can cost tens to hundreds of millions. Four companies are vying to get on, because Unitree “broke the circle” last year thanks to the Spring Festival Gala, and its valuation increased several times.
This is not a gala, it’s a product launch.
I tried to compare the situation of the Spring Festival Gala robots with the situation of ordinary people:
Robots do somersaults, with millimeter-level joint precision; delivery workers get their pay docked if they are a few minutes late.
Robots are not afraid of the cold, they work as usual in severe cold; elderly people in Hebei villages cannot afford heating in winter.
Robots can be freely bought and sold, with clearly marked prices; the women in x county are tied L and taken in.
If a robot breaks down, engineers come to repair it; if the lungs of dust f disease miners are broken, no one repairs them.
A Spring Festival Gala robot seat costs tens of millions; migrant workers’ wages are in arrears, with special actions every year, but they are never completely resolved.
Robots have property certificates, maintenance manuals, and after-sales service; 84 million new employment form workers don’t even have a labor contract.
On the Spring Festival Gala, Galaxy General’s robot is equipped with a body-based large model that can interact with people in real time. Magic Atom’s MagicBot Z1 has 24 degrees of freedom, 130 N·m torque, and a 320-degree joint movement range, capable of continuous falling, getting up, and backflips.
They have emotional perception systems and can recognize human emotions.
They have clear property rights, maintenance budgets, and technology upgrade roadmaps.
If they break down, engineers repair them.
They are not afraid of the cold—industrial-grade operating temperature, operating normally in severe cold and heat.
They are not tired—7×24 hours, no overtime pay required.
Core technology is independently controllable.
Really, very impressive.
Then I thought of some other things.
There are more than 84 million new employment form workers nationwide—delivery riders, express delivery personnel, and ride-hailing drivers. Many of them are exposed to traffic risks and physical wear and tear for long periods. A rider said in an interview: “I dare not mute my phone 24 hours a day, for fear of missing an order and getting a bad review. I even have nightmares about rushing to deliver meals while sleeping.”
They don’t have emotional perception systems. The system only perceives whether they are late.
According to riders, they get their pay docked if they are a few minutes late, and get more deductions for complaints. In case of a traffic accident, the platform’s first reaction is to confirm whether the order has been delivered.
Most of them don’t have labor contracts. Social security is a luxury. They are not called “employees”, but “partners”, so the platform does not have to bear employer responsibility.
Robots have property certificates. They don’t even have a contract.
Every winter, there is a round of “Winter Special Action to Address Wage Arrears”. In November 2025, another round came—”From November 1, 2025 to before the Spring Festival in 2026″, comprehensively correcting wage arrears.
Every year, they address it. Every year, there are arrears. Every year, they address it.
By the time the Spring Festival Gala starts, the robots are already doing somersaults.
The matter of wage arrears, during the New Year, whether you have money or not, go home and eat dumplings.
The number of migrant workers moving across provinces decreased from 78.67 million in 2014 to 68.4 million in 2024. Ten million fewer in ten years.
It’s not that they don’t want to go out. It’s that going out is meaningless. The income premium for working across provinces is narrowing, and the costs and risks have not decreased. There are deliveries and part-time jobs in the county, although they are not good jobs, at least they don’t have to leave their hometowns to beg for a salary that may evaporate at any time.
The migration of robots is very simple—packaging, transportation, and deployment. They don’t miss home, they don’t stay behind, and they don’t have children waiting for them in their hometowns.
How many left-behind children do we still have? This number has not been updated for a long time.
Every New Year’s Eve, the Spring Festival Gala shows you: how amazing we are. 5G, AI, quantum computing, humanoid robots. Core technology is independently controllable.
It doesn’t show you: what does these progress have to do with you?
Robots are becoming more and more flexible, and workers are increasingly trapped in algorithms. Technology is becoming more and more advanced, and the situation of ordinary people is becoming more and more primitive.
On stage, humans and machines dance together; off stage, humans are inferior to machines.
How much a place is willing to spend to let robots do somersaults shows how much effort it is willing to put into living people.
In the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, robots are becoming more and more like humans.
They can dance, speak, perceive emotions, and be well maintained.
And what about humans?
They can run, they can carry, if they break, replace them, no one cares.
So are robots becoming human, or are humans becoming cattle and horses?
Or, to put it another way—
In this land, who is treated with care? Who is the consumable?
Li Yuchen’s article stands in the dust
Written on February 16, 2026
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