On 20 February, JD.com (京东) reported a spike in interest just two hours into the Spring Festival Gala. Searches for its robotics offerings jumped more than 300% quarter-on-quarter, while customer service enquiries rose 460% and orders climbed 150%. The trigger was clear: robots had taken centre stage on one of China’s biggest cultural broadcasts. The follow-on effect is now playing out in sales, and a growing robot repair market in China.
Since the start of 2026, JD.com says robot repair orders have continued to climb, pointing to a new layer of infrastructure demand beneath China’s fast-scaling robotics market. Consumption is no longer the bottleneck. Maintenance is.
To meet that demand, JD.com Services has been building out a national repair network, with centres now spanning eight provinces. The scope is broad. It covers everything from embodied and AI-driven systems to quadruped robots, as well as more familiar household devices like robotic vacuum cleaners. In ten cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the company now offers on-site servicing, alongside ongoing debugging and routine maintenance.
The more telling move is up the ladder. In September last year, JD.com launched a technical training and certification centre aimed at capturing the robot repair market in China. Courses span a range of the top Chinese players: Unitree, Zhiyuan, and Yunshenchu all make the list, and with hundreds of engineers already trained. The goal here is not scale, but consistency.
All this points to a shift in how the robotics industry in China is shifting. Hardware may capture attention, but service ecosystems sustain adoption. JD.com is now positioning itself in that layer, even floating plans for a dedicated robot rescue team – yes, you read that correctly. In China’s robotics race, it looks like selling machines is only the first step. Keeping them running will be at the core of the system.
