The scene went round the news wires: at the opening ceremony of the Global Developer Conference on Embodied AI (GDPS) 2025, on 13 December in Shanghai, the Unitree G1 humanoid robot, dressed in a white Tai Chi outfit, executed a series of movements — starting posture, Wild Horse Parts Mane, White Crane Spreads Wings — alongside human martial artists, according to Yicai Global. A few moments earlier, the AgiBot (Zhiyuan) Lingxi X2, costumed as a lion, simulated a lion dance troupe by walking on plum blossom stakes to the rhythm of drums. And for the first time, two manufacturers presented as direct rivals shared the stage, their very first joint humanoid performance, as noted by DigiTimes.

The spontaneous reading was uniform everywhere: here is the dazzling proof of the intelligence of Chinese humanoids. It is precisely there that folklore blurs the view. For the summit orchestrating the spectacle is, in the same move, selling what explains it.

The choreography is not a feat, it is a product sheet

At the same GDPS, Unitree launched its developer platform. According to Interesting Engineering, this platform allows remote control of humanoid robots from a smartphone, using the phone’s camera to guide movements. The same media reports that it comes with preloaded action routines: martial arts, a The Twist dance and ballet sequences.

In other words, the Tai Chi presented as a demonstration of autonomy corresponds very precisely to what Unitree markets: scripted playback and/or teleoperation, staged in a white costume. The proper question is therefore not “can robots do Tai Chi?”, but: does the choreography prove anything that a preloaded routine could not produce? Getting a humanoid to chain together martial arts postures is the very use the manufacturer highlights in its app store. The spectacle does not demonstrate intelligence; it demonstrates that the product does what it is sold for.

Two “rivals” on stage, the same state calendar

It remains to be understood why two competitors choose this specific summit for their first joint appearance. The clue lies in the programme. The first joint stage appearance by AgiBot and Unitree falls on the very day Shanghai announces, at GDPS, the launch of the construction of Zhangjiang AI Innovation Town, according to Futunn.

The timing is no coincidence. According to Yicai Global, the city aims to boost the core of its embodied AI industry to more than 50 billion yuan by 2027. Viewed from this angle, the “rivalry” between the two brands fades in favour of another image: that of a national sector put on display. Competition becomes decoration; the photo of the two champions side by side serves a public policy narrative, aligned with a foundation stone and a budget target.

True leadership is not danced, it is counted

If one seeks hard proof of Chinese advancement, it is not in the dance but in the volumes. According to the research firm Omdia, cited by Fox News, AgiBot dominated global humanoid deliveries in 2025 with 5,168 units out of approximately 13,000 shipped worldwide that year. It is this metric, and not a white crane posture, that says something concrete about the industrial balance of power.

The contrast sums up the entire gap between staging and capability. A delivery figure measures an industry that produces and moves goods; a choreography measures above all the quality of a preloaded routine and a stage setup. The two can coexist, but they do not say the same thing — and only the latter was projected under the drums.

What remains unproven

GDPS also hosted a contest meant to evaluate robots on industrial assembly tasks, emergency rescue and domestic services. Until the actual success rates of these trials are published, nothing allows us to distinguish autonomous capability from a scripted or teleoperated demonstration — the very process that Unitree’s platform makes commonplace.

Cultural folklore is therefore not the subject: it is the screen. Behind the Tai Chi and the lion dance plays a narrative of industry and public policy, where humanoid autonomy remains a promise to be verified. The real news from Shanghai was not that robots know how to dance. It was that a state knew how to make the narrative dance.