The jobs of hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers are under threat as plans to replace human labor with robotic and automated technology gathers momentum – especially within textile factories. The reason? Rising labor costs, foreign competition, and increasing pollution, which is pressuring China’s textile sector to modernize – and quickly. According to news service Aljazeera, the Chinese Communist Party has launched new subsidy schemes on a national scale for technology upgrades across its factories. Hundreds of thousands of unskilled workers in the southeast of the country could be affected in the coming twelve months; particularly those based in China’s predominate manufacturing hubs – Guangdong, Zhejiang and Lanxi. In Guangdong the government plans to invest a total of $154bn to integrate robots into manufacturing production. Guangzhou, the capital of the province, has reportedly set a goal to have 80% of its manufacturing produced robotically by 2020. In Zhejiang, the government has invested $3.9bn into 661 technology-upgrade projects, of which $2.4bn is set aside for the textile sector. Elsewhere in Lanxi city, a trial scheme involving 70 local textile enterprises has bowed, implementing automated upgrades in each of the firms up until the end of the year. Meanwhile, plans to launch similar programmes in Jiangsu and areas of the Pearl River Delta are also planned.According to the news report, China is expected to save some $69m per year in efficiency and labor costs by replacing humans with mechanics. Robots, while still a relatively new concept in China’s garment and textile industries, are quite common in China’s generic manufacturing sector. In 2013, China’s insatiable appetite for more output saw it overtake Japan and South Korea, becoming the world's largest robotics market per capita, now worth about $9.5bn. Despite the push in robotic technology, the textiles sector still has limits to modernization due to the complicated techniques, namely stitching and finishing, involved in making clothes. Such intricate and artisanal processes depend on manual labor and are much more difficult to automate than say, cars or electronics. To overcome this, Chinese firms have begun to move operations offshore to Vietnam, where wages are approximately one-third lower than in China. The shift sees the garments receive that personal human touch, at fraction of the cost. But the quality is at loss and the ethics of such offshoring is deemed unethical. Despite the rise in robots and shifting of intricate textile processing to developing countries, China’s human textile workforce shouldn’t be written off just yet, according to experts. "We will see that there will be a large number of low-skilled workers who lose their jobs," Yves Wang, a research manager at IDC, told Aljazeera."But in the long run the impact will be positive. If we look at Germany, for example, where the robotic adoption rate is very high, their employment rate has actually increased. We believe robotics will create a lot of highly skilled jobs for Chinese workers." One Chinese firm who has managed to integrate both new technologies and human craftsmanship, is Tian Yi Textiles. Based on the east coast of China in the Haining district (just outside Shanghai), Tian Yi is a prominent textile manufacturer whose expertise covers linen, gray fabric, and fabric dyeing. Tian Yi has recently brought in hi-tech machinery from Italy in order to reach new levels with their production. Today, they have more than 300 machines - from dobby fabric makers, to rapier jacquard operators, as well as weaving machines. This gives them an annual production capacity of some 300 million meters. But the design skill comes via their people; experienced technical experts creating quality pieces as part of a thorough management system and competent design department, In essence, human resource helps Tian Yi find new ways to improve efficiencies, in order to produce the best possible quality textiles. It's a refreshing model where humans and robotic technologies are seen united, needing both to increase the competitive advantage of a textile mill.Shop Tian Yi's latest collection on Le Souk by clicking here.