China debuts ‘scary’ martial arts robots capable of backflips and weapons training

China’s latest autonomous robots display has some viewers worried while others can’t even believe it is real.

China held its annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, which is an annual performance that shows off the latest the country has to offer in tech.

‘Some “imperfection” movement of the robots is really scary.’

The event saw a reported 677 million viewers across platforms, according to China Daily, and an alleged 13.5 billion views on clips after the fact.

What caught the most eyes in the West though, was the performance of humanoid robots from tech company Unitree Robotics. Unitree was one of four robot companies to put on displays, but it seemingly caught the most eyes with its robots’ drunken boxing routine, performed alongside acrobatic children.

The performance included sword and staff work, gymnastics, and even breakdancing. According to NBC News, new innovations in multi-robot coordination and fault recovery were a focus in the display, with the latter referring to a robot’s ability to get up after falling down.

Reactions online were a mix of shock and awe, along with worry.

“This is getting scary and creepy,” one user commented on YouTube.

“Some ‘imperfection’ movement of the robots is really scary,” another viewer added.

However, there exist claims that the robots are not actually this advanced, and some sort of postproduction was involved.

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On X, one viewer pointed out the drastic difference between the robotic capabilities on display at the festival in 2025 versus 2026. Last year, robots were stumbling around waving handkerchiefs, while this year they are in choreographed gymnastics and martial arts displays.

“In just one year, they have evolved from robots to ‘humans,'” AI entrepreneur Tansu Yegen wrote.

Another user disputed the video, saying he saw the same robots at a live demo “a month ago in Shenzhen.”

“They’re slow, shaky, & can barely shuffle let alone do any of this. This isn’t the first time unitree has used cgi to fake capability,” he claimed.

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Last year, Unitree put on a Humanoid Robot Boxing event that showed robots sloppily competing in martial arts with one another. The capabilities this February would likely be considered a vast jump from what was seen in May 2025 by the fighter bots.

Still there is yet to be any concrete evidence that Unitree or China was faking the event.

At the same time though, Shenzhen EngineAI Robotics Technology Co. Ltd. launched the Ultimate Robot Knock-Out Legend event a week earlier.

The company plans to have “Chinese Robot Kung Fu” robots battle it out for a 10-kilogram pure gold belt worth about $1.4 million.

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