China's 'Dark Factories' Run on AI, Not Workers
AI-powered factories requiring virtually zero human workers are threatening to gut China's already strained labor market.
They call them "dark factories" — manufacturing facilities so automated they don't even need the lights on. Powered by AI and robotics, these plants operate with essentially no human workforce. And they're spreading fast across China.
The timing couldn't be worse. China's labor market is already reeling from the impact of tariffs, and workers who fueled the country's manufacturing boom are now watching their livelihoods evaporate. Wages are falling. Jobs are vanishing.
The cruel irony: the same workers who helped China defy tariff pressures through sheer productivity are now being replaced by the machines their labor helped build. Dark factories represent the logical endpoint of automation — full removal of human hands from the production line.
For millions of Chinese factory workers, the future just got a lot darker.