--- title: "From a 'three-no' startup to China's first robot stock — Qu Daokui's 25-year run at SIASUN" date: 2026-10-15 category: Builders site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-people-siasun-qu-daokui language: en --- # From a 'three-no' startup to China's first robot stock — Qu Daokui's 25-year run at SIASUN > How a researcher trained by the 'father of Chinese robotics' built SIASUN from a borrowed office into a publicly listed robot maker supplying 40-plus countries. A young engineer stood in a German car plant and stared at a line of hundreds of robots welding, painting, and moving parts with no human in sight. Back home in Shenyang, his own institute had barely a handful of research robots. That gap — between "they have it" and "we have nothing" — is what Qu Daokui (曲道奎) spent the next three decades trying to close. **He is not a household name outside manufacturing circles. He should be.** ## A student of the 'father of Chinese robotics' Qu was born in September 1961 in Qingzhou, Shandong. He studied under Jiang Xinsong (蒋新松), the Chinese Academy of Sciences academician widely called the "father of Chinese robotics." Qu earned his master's from the CAS Shenyang Institute of Automation in 1986 and, in 1992, became a visiting scholar at Saarland University in Germany — the trip that showed him what robotized industry actually looked like at scale. His mentor's mantra, half-joking and half-serious, was "活着干，死了算" — work while you live, count it done when you're dead. Qu carried that urgency into a field China had barely begun to industrialize. ## The 'three-no' company In April 2000, Qu led a small team out of the research institute to found SIASUN Robot & Automation (新松机器人). The name is a tribute to Jiang, whose given name "Xinsong" became the company's brand after his death. The early days were unglamorous. Old employees recall a "three-no" outfit — **no product, no customers, no office** — borrowing space inside the automation institute while they turned academic know-how into sellable machines. Qu's own line about the leap from scientist to entrepreneur: he was driven by "interest, hobby, and a sense of mission," not by any businessman's instinct. ## Breaking the 'only import, never export' curse The break came in 2007, when SIASUN's AGV mobile robots entered General Motors' global procurement system. For a Chinese robot maker, that was more than a contract — it broke the decades-old pattern of China only buying foreign robots, never selling its own. A few milestones that anchor the SIASUN story: - **2009 (30 October):** SIASUN listed on Shenzhen's ChiNext board, becoming China's **first "robot stock."** - **2018:** 24 SIASUN mobile robots carrying "ice-screen" displays performed in the "Beijing 8 Minutes" handover at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics closing ceremony — a rare moment of Chinese robotics on a global stage. - **Today:** the company's products are used in automotive, aerospace, semiconductor, nuclear, power, and petrochemical settings, and have been exported to **more than 40 countries and regions.** ## Why SIASUN matters in the embodied-intelligence era The current Chinese robotics wave talks a lot about humanoid (人形机器人) and embodied intelligence (具身智能). SIASUN was early proof that a Chinese company could build a full product line — industrial arms, mobile robots, cleanroom and special-purpose machines, and medical service robots — and compete internationally on engineering, not just cost. Qu has long argued the right posture is "只引领，不跟随" — **lead, don't follow.** That stance shaped SIASUN's bet on research depth: the company has registered well over a hundred patents in most years since 2013 and built collaborative robots certified to international safety standards. For the embodied intelligence (具身智能) push now sweeping Chinese factories and labs, SIASUN is a useful reference point: the hard part was never a single flashy demo, but two decades of reliability, service networks, and customer trust. ## The man behind the title Qu wears several hats that explain his influence beyond one company: - Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and deputy director of the National Engineering Research Center for Robotics. - Chairman of the China Robot Industry Alliance. - Group leader of the national robotics standardization committee. - Honors include CCTV's 2014 Top Ten Science & Technology Innovation Figures and the 2020 National Labor Model award. He is, in other words, both a builder and a standard-setter — the kind of figure who shapes how an entire domestic industry measures itself. ## Honest limitations This profile is deliberately narrow, and readers should weigh what it leaves out: - **Financials are not dissected here.** SIASUN is publicly listed, but this article focuses on verified biographical and milestone facts rather than current revenue, margin, or order-book strength. - **The "first robot stock" status is historical.** A wave of newer humanoid (人形机器人) and embodied-intelligence (具身智能) startups now competes for attention and capital that once flowed mostly to incumbents like SIASUN. - **Export reach is real but maturing.** Serving 40-plus countries is genuine scale, yet it is a different challenge from leading the global high-end segment against entrenched Japanese, German, and Swiss incumbents. - **Competitive pressure is intensifying**, both from low-cost domestic rivals and from a new generation of AI-native robotics ventures. ## What readers can do now - **Track SIASUN's ChiNext disclosures** (Shenzhen exchange filings) for order backlog and gross-margin trends — the real test of whether "lead, don't follow" still pays. - **Watch the embodied intelligence (具身智能) and humanoid (人形机器人) segment** to see whether incumbents or newcomers capture the next adoption wave. - **Follow the national robotics standardization committee's output**, where Qu's committee work signals where Chinese robotics is being asked to converge. - **Benchmark against global peers** — German, Japanese, and Swiss robot makers — before assuming any single Chinese firm leads the high end. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-people-siasun-qu-daokui Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.