China’s humanoid robot makers are generating much of their revenue from selling machines to government-backed training centres — which then collect and sell training data back to the robot makers, raising concerns about actual demand in an industry Beijing is keen to promote.The widely adopted model, reminiscent of Nvidia’s “circular financing” of AI data centres, has fuelled China’s so-called embodied AI industry. Valuations of start-ups such as AgiBot and Hong Kong-listed UBTech have soared on...