The 2020 China Robot Industry Development Conference was held in the Qingdao National High-tech Industrial Development Zone from Nov 22 to 24.

The conference was jointly hosted by the Qingdao municipal government, the China Robot Industry Alliance (CRIA), and the management committee of the Qingdao high-tech zone, and also received support from robotics associations in South Korea, Russia, Japan, the US, Germany, and other countries and regions.

The 2020 China Robot Industry Development Conference is held in Qingdao from Nov 22 to 24. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Nearly 300 guests attended the event, including government officials, academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, members of industry associations, experts and scholars from universities and research institutes, and representatives from robotics and high-tech enterprises.

The conference focused on national robot development policies and industrial trends and consisted of an entrepreneur summit, a themed forum, CEO roundtable dialogues, sub-forums, and exhibitions.

The Qingdao municipal government signs strategic cooperation agreements with companies to promote intelligent manufacturing at the conference. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

China's industrial robot market continued to shrink in 2019, but remained the world's largest for the seventh straight year. Sales of industrial robots in China fell by 8.6 percent year-on-year to 144,000 units last year. The decline was 7.7 percentage points more than in 2018, according to statistics from CRIA and the International Federation of Robotics released at the conference.

Foreign brands sold about 99,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 12.2 percent, while domestic brands sold about 45,000 units, a slight increase of 0.8 percent.

The latest industrial robot products are exhibited at the conference. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The CRIA predicted that China's industrial robot market is likely to see growth in 2020.

The Qingdao high-tech zone management committee signed cooperation agreements with six enterprises at the conference, which will bolster the area's efforts to build a competitive artificial intelligence application and service industry.

Xinhua contributed to this story.