China’s Spring Festival Gala on Tuesday evening featured a robot dance performance, an American rock band and hi-tech visual effects, while delivering political messages that reinforced a unified national identity and criticised bureaucratic inefficiency.
Recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s most-watched annual TV programme, this year’s five-hour live broadcast drew a record 2.8 billion views – 690 million more than last year, according to preliminary statistics.
One of the most striking performances of the night was an AI-driven dance segment called “Yangge Bot”.
Directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the segment featured 16 humanoid robots from Unitree Robotics joined by dancers from Xinjiang Arts University. They performed a synchronised yangge dance, a folk dance popular across northern China.
Dressed in floral cotton jackets, the robots twirled handkerchiefs – tossing them and catching them mid-air – and spun in perfect sync with the music and their human counterparts.
