Here’s an interesting case study of a factory in China that added robots because management needed to increase productivity and cut costs. It’s refreshingly honest because the boss doesn’t bother to lie with silly stories about how robots will “help” workers by doing the boring repetitive stuff — the company is doing it to save money, period. It’s Red China and they don’t pretend to care about workers’ feelings.

Plus, the report explains in plain language the workers cut versus the productivity gained. Management used automation to shrink the workforce from 440 to 370, and at the same time it increased its production of lenses from four million to five million annually. Sorry, Chinese workers. This is progress in the automation age.

China used to supply the cheap labor that western manufacturers want, but now they need even cheaper automation that doesn’t require breaks, lunch or paychecks.

The point here is that the same switch to automation is going on all around the industrialized world, but the ChiComs are at least more honest about their financial motivation.