Foxconn has long been considered a bellwether of Chinese manufacturing. When, four years ago, China’s largest private employer and primary assembler of Apple iPhones raised wages by up to 25% for its 1.2 million workers, manufacturers throughout China were forced to follow suit. Then in May, Foxconn announced a move of even greater import, disclosing that it had replaced 60,000 of the 110,000 workers at its giant plant in Kunshan, near Shanghai, by deploying thousands of industrial robots.

Analysts in the West either hail the coming robot revolution as a harbinger of unprecedented prosperity or warn of the widespread upheaval and massive loss of jobs it will leave in its wake. Does Foxconn’s rising robot army spell doom for the “world’s factory”? We think not.

Our work with Chinese and multinational clients leads us to conclude that, far from being blindsided by these new technologies, China’s private manufacturers have the opportunity, thanks to robots, to emerge stronger and more competitive than ever.

China was late to embrace the robot revolution. There are still only 36 robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in China, whereas in Japan there are 315 robots per 10,000 workers, and in South Korea, 478. But China has been moving boldly to close the gap. Beijing has set a goal of raising the robot-to-worker ratio to more than 100 by 2020.

The vast size of China’s manufacturing industry offers huge potential for economies of scale. President Xi Jinping has declared automation a national priority. And “Made in China 2025,” an industry strategy announced by Beijing last year, provides manufacturers with billions of yuan for technological upgrades, including advanced machinery and robots. The provinces of Guangdong and Zhejiang alone have allocated $150 billion and $120 billion, respectively, over the next five years to equip factories with industrial robots.