New Delhi/Beijing, Dec 30 : After cementing its position across tech domains globally, China has unveiled a five-year plan to become an innovation hub for the global robotics industry by 2025, as industries like automobile, aerospace, railway transportation, logistics and mining aim to roll out smart factories. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement that the operating income of China's robotics industry is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 20 per cent from 2021 to 2025. "The move is part of the nation's broader push to cope with a graying population and leverage cutting-edge technologies to advance industrial upgrades, experts said," state-owned newspaper China Daily reported on Wednesday. More efforts will also be made to achieve breakthroughs in core robot components, such as speed reducers, servomotors, and control panels - the three basic building blocks of sophisticated automated machines. China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots for eight consecutive years. The country now aims to double its manufacturing robot density by 2025. "The goal is that by 2025, the performance and reliability of these homegrown key components can reach the level of advanced foreign products," Wang Weiming, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, was quoted as saying. In 2020, the operating income of China's robotics sector exceeded 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion) for the first time. The International Federation of Robotics predicted that globally industrial robot installations are expected to rebound strongly and grow by 13 percent year-on-year to 435,000 units in 2021, despite the pandemic. The Chinese government is expecting high-end advanced robots to be adopted across more sectors, including automobile, aerospace, railway, logistics, and mining, according to the report. Citing data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the report noted that the cumulative output of industrial robots in China hit 330,000 units in the first 11 months this year, growing 49 per cent year-on-year. /IANS