At 11 p.m., a Beijing resident surnamed Li lay in bed and opened the delivery app Meituan. Feeling unwell, he needed a digestive aid. After completing a real-time consultation with a doctor inside the app, the order was automatically passed to an unmanned pharmacy. The humanoid robot "G1," made by Galbot, approached a shelf packed with more than 5,000 types of medicine and picked out the digestive aid, completing the packaging within one minute. A remote pharmacist handled only the prescription review and medication guidance, and a delivery worker received the medicine handed over by the robot and dropped it off at the front door.
For the Beijing correspondents who met Galbot in March, this scene is only half true. At the time, Galbot demonstrated only the ability to pick up and package lenses of similar specifications, not medicines of varying product names and sizes. The robot at the pharmacy was standing still, and it was reportedly taken away when the correspondents showed interest. Even in photographs, it was doubtful whether a robot with only two blunt fingers could pick up and hand over medicine.
Is it enough to dismiss this as China's characteristic bluster? Yet Galbot has drawn up a plan to expand its unmanned pharmacies and convenience stores to 1,000 locations within the year. It noted that the Chinese government permitted non-face-to-face medical treatment in 2014 and approved unmanned pharmacies last December.
And what about us? In late 2025, 10 years behind China, the National Assembly passed an amendment to the Medical Service Act that allowed non-face-to-face treatment in part, but under the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, medicine still cannot be received by parcel delivery. China's distinctive speed—first removing regulations and eliminating any room for backlash—more than makes up for its rough technology.
The same scene has played out in the battery industry. Korea's three battery makers turned away from lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries on the grounds that they have low energy density and are heavy. China moved in the opposite direction. Backed by the Chinese government's electric vehicle subsidy policy and research and development (R&D) tax benefits, CATL poured money into LFP technology. CATL, which now accounts for 42% of the global battery market, last month unveiled an LFP battery capable of traveling 1,500 km on a six-minute charge. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, praised it as "technology that changes transportation." Here, too, there are sharp criticisms that "this is performance possible only in the laboratory and weakens on actual roads," but China pays no heed.
China's semiconductors are also advancing rapidly. Huawei, its flagship player, recently declared the "Tao (τ) Law" in place of "Moore's Law," which has dominated the semiconductor industry for the past 60 years. He Tingbo, president of Huawei's semiconductor business division, said the company would achieve a density equivalent to 1.4 nanometers at the current 7-nanometer (nm, one-billionth of a meter) level. Instead of making transistors smaller through fine processing, the company aims to boost performance by reducing the time it takes for signals to travel. The key is "logic folding" technology, which folds a square so that two vertices touch—like the scene in the film "Inception" where the world folds—and it is assessed as having potential.
Huawei has built its own operating system "HarmonyOS" instead of Google's Android, and has countered U.S. sanctions with its "Ascend" chips instead of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs). This logic folding technology can be seen as a solution to the U.S. embargo on semiconductor equipment. Logic folding draws particular attention because it is a strategy that utilizes packaging—whose importance is growing in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)—and because it could be applied down the road to memory, an area in which Korea is strong.
China is not waiting for "the completion of technology" right now. Even if it is unfinished, even if it is not the world's best, the state removes regulations and injects capital to eventually push it through. Private-sector creativity moves within the playing field laid out by the state. On this field, there are no social costs, such as the backlash that comes with introducing new industries.
Their approach is uncomfortable for us, but it is a reality we cannot ignore. Korea does not need to copy China's style of control, nor is it possible, but realities that must change clearly exist. Institutions that move slower than the speed of technology, supply chain self-reliance to complement the technological sovereignty held by the United States, and policies that change drastically every time the government changes—these are Korea's weaknesses compared with any country.
The reason China is threatening is not the completeness of its technology. It is the tenacity with which companies and the state throw themselves fully behind half-finished technology and unverified possibilities and push them to the end. While we discuss institutions, they are already laying out the next playing field.
