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.
The annual variety show first aired in 1983 on state broadcaster CCTV. It remains a key cultural event in China during Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival.
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.
The robots underwent three months of AI-driven training and used laser SLAM, or simultaneous localisation and mapping positioning, to navigate the stage, adjusting for surface irregularities while maintaining balance. Their precision and perfectly coordinated movements earned praise on social media.
Unitree Robotics is based in the city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, also home to AI start-up DeepSeek and Game Science, the developer of hit video game Black Myth: Wukong.
Another hi-tech highlight of this year’s gala was its cloud-powered global broadcast.
Alibaba Cloud replaced traditional satellite transmission with high-definition streaming to billions of viewers. Hangzhou-based Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, also provided streaming of the 2024 Paris Olympics broadcast for CCTV.
The cloud-based tech allowed for artificial intelligence-based visual effects, including a 360-degree “bullet time” effect during a performance by martial arts actor Donnie Yen. Using 30 ultra-HD cameras, an AI-powered system reconstructed movements in real time, offering dynamic multi-angle views reminiscent of Hollywood action sequences.
Most of this year’s gala was filmed in Beijing, but it also included segments shot in Chongqing, Wuhan, Lhasa and Wuxi.
In Wuhan, OneRepublic made history as the first American band to perform during the gala’s four-decade run. The band was quarantined in the central Chinese city in 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The group was vocal about its support for the city and its lockdown measures at the time.
For the gala, OneRepublic performed their chart-topping hit “Counting Stars” in front of Wuhan’s famous Yellow Crane Tower.
“By featuring OneRepublic, the gala not only added a touch of international flair but also sent a message of China’s cultural openness,” CCTV said.
The Lunar New Year Gala is meticulously scripted to reflect Beijing’s latest political messaging. Most notably, this year’s programme did not list performers as being from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan – marking a departure from past practice, which distinguished them from performers from mainland China.
Chinese media and observers welcomed the change, calling it a reaffirmation of national unity and noting that “we all come from China – there’s no need for distinctions”.
The gala also featured a satirical sketch poking fun at bureaucratic excess, a key issue in the crosshairs of China’s top anti-corruption watchdog. It depicted a local official whose directives escalated into pointless “image projects”, from occasional window cleaning to mandatory daily scrubbing.
Reflecting real cases exposed by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the skit highlighted the misuse of public funds on vanity projects and reinforced Beijing’s push against formalism and inefficiency. A state media commentary said it echoed “Xi’s calls for practical, people-centred governance”.