China is expected to overtake Japan as the world's largest user of robots next year as they become more affordable for manufacturers in the face of the country's increasing labor costs, a senior official from the robot industry alliance said on Thursday.

Qu Daokui, chairman of the China Robot Industry Alliance, said the price of industrial robots has dropped 50 percent over the past five years and will keep going down 4 percent a year, while workers' salaries in China keep rising, tempting many companies to replace human labor with robots.

China's will have a demand for 35,000 robots in 2015, accounting for about 17 percent of the world's sales, Qu said, quoting the Frankfurt-based International Federation of Robotics.