The Dark Factories and the New Light of Work

Chinese automation shows that producing in Europe can once again be competitive.
But not every job will be transformable, and both politics and younger generations will need to find new answers.

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen.”
With this phrase, quoted by The Telegraph in an article by Matt Oliver, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley described his visit to a Zeekr factory — Geely’s premium brand — in Ningbo.
A fully automated plant where electric cars roll off the line complete, without a single worker.
Everything happens in silence, in the dark, inside what British journalists have called a dark factory.

According to The Telegraph, between 2014 and 2024 China went from 189,000 to more than two million industrial robots.
Today there are 567 for every 10,000 workers — more than in Germany, nearly double the number in the United States, and five times that of the UK.
These figures mark a historic turning point: China no longer copies — it creates, and it does so with an efficiency that is redefining the very concept of manufacturing.

China No Longer Copies

For years, China’s image was that of the world’s workshop: cheap labor, imitation products, quantity over quality.
That model is over.
China’s new competitiveness stems from a systemic approach, driven by coordinated public policies and massive investment in automation.

The Made in China 2025 plan and the jiqi huanren policy — “replacing humans with machines” — have encouraged thousands of companies to digitize their production lines.
The result is an industrial ecosystem where production is no longer offshored: it is automated at home, maintaining low margins, reduced times, and total control.

The change is not just technological but cultural: in China, robotics is seen as a national achievement, not a threat.
While Europe and the United States remain trapped between nostalgia and fear, Beijing experiments without hesitation.

A Lesson to Interpret

The West observes, debates — and often hesitates.
Yet the lesson is clear: productivity is the new frontier of competitiveness, and robotics now offers the very real possibility of producing in Europe at costs similar to those in China.

This is not an unrealistic dream.
Automation reduces the impact of labor costs, which once represented the main advantage of emerging countries.
If production is robotic, what makes the difference is not wages but the ability to design intelligent processes and ensure energy, logistics, and stability.

With targeted investments, a European plant can achieve the same efficiency as an Asian one — with a strategic advantage: proximity to markets, higher perceived quality, and a regulated context.
Paradoxically, technology can bring manufacturing back home.

A Profound Change

The most striking aspect of China’s model is its coherence.
Automation is not seen as a danger to employment, but as a response to a demographic problem — the decline of the workforce.
The government encourages the replacement of repetitive tasks with robots, freeing human resources for supervision, research, and development.

However, this process raises a crucial question: will all jobs be transformed — or only some?
The Telegraph describes factories where a few dozen technicians supervise thousands of machines.
Many workers in that context no longer have a direct role.
It’s a reality that raises difficult questions:
what will happen to those who cannot be “retrained”?
What form will work take in a society where human time is no longer the measure of production?

On this point, no one — not even China — has an answer yet.
And it will be politics, both East and West, that will have to find one.
It’s not just about managing the industrial transition, but also about guiding the social one: educating, redistributing, and protecting without blocking progress.

Europe Can Be Competitive Again

Europe — and Italy in particular — can still play an important role.
The technological transition offers a window of opportunity: the same technologies that made China a world leader can help Europe regain its manufacturing relevance.

If robots cut costs, the difference will no longer lie in price, but in quality, design, proximity, and supply-chain security.
Producing closer to markets reduces environmental impact, accelerates logistics, and allows direct control over sustainability.
Above all, it restores to European industry the chance not to depend entirely on Asian supply chains.

To achieve this, however, requires industrial policy with vision.
Temporary bonuses or unfulfilled plans are not enough.
What’s needed are stable public investments, collaboration between universities and companies, and genuine support for automation in small and medium-sized enterprises.
Bureaucracy must become an ally, not an obstacle.
And innovation can no longer be a topic for conferences — it must become a matter of economic survival.

A Future Yet to Be Written

The industrial revolution we are experiencing is not made of machines alone — it is made of choices.
Automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence will inevitably change work, but how they do so depends on us.
Not every profession can be converted.
Some will disappear, others will emerge, many will transform.

The challenge will be to preserve the human value of work, despite the growing efficiency of machines.
This is a political responsibility — but also a personal one.

Politics must create the conditions: technical education, support for innovation, inclusion policies.
But that won’t be enough.
A new cultural drive is needed — a generation ready to believe again in the value of building, trying, and risking.

Young people will have to rediscover the desire to act, the confidence to move forward, and the courage to leap beyond the obstacle.
They cannot wait for someone else to design their path — they must become the protagonists of their own story.
Because technology can automate processes, but enthusiasm and curiosity remain irreplaceable.

From Darkness to Light

Dark factories don’t need light because robots work in them.
But perhaps it’s our own factories — bright and slow — that are truly in the dark: a darkness made of fear, distrust, and resignation.

Turning on the light means believing in the future as a project, not as destiny.
It means understanding that technology is not an adversary, but a tool to improve life — if guided with intelligence and responsibility.

Machines don’t steal the meaning of work; they force us to redefine it.
And in that redefinition, politics, business, and new generations must together find a new balance.

Because the real risk is not that robots will replace people —
but that people will stop believing they can still change things.

And in the future of industry, as in that of society, the light of tomorrow will depend on how much courage we have today.