The park was in the center of China’s richest county. Willow trees clustered around a well-manicured pond. Joggers in performance gear circled shiny new playgrounds filled with children.

But in a quieter part of the park, Hu Xinbing was resting after another day of trying, unsuccessfully, to win his share of the local prosperity. After failing to find a job that morning, Mr. Hu, 31, lay behind some bushes, using a windbreaker as a pillow, and waited until he could try again the next day.

Around him, about a dozen other out-of-work men had claimed their own corners of the park in Kunshan, about 30 miles outside of Shanghai, dozing on benches or inside tents.

Not long ago, they would have been hard-pressed to find the downtime. Kunshan, which in the early 2010s produced one-third of the world’s laptops, is at the heart of China’s gargantuan electronics manufacturing industry. For decades, millions of workers from across the country, including Mr. Hu, flocked there for steady work assembling devices for Apple and Dell. For more than 20 years, Kunshan has been ranked as China’s most economically developed county.

But now Mr. Hu is one of tens of millions of workers who may be left behind by China’s pivot away from low-end manufacturing toward advanced technology. Kunshan’s government has offered generous support for companies focused on technologies such as artificial intelligence or flying cars. Meanwhile, traditional electronics makers, facing uncertain demand because of trade frictions, have embraced automation, cutting positions and wages for human workers.

“It’s all robots driving screws. They don’t need people to do it anymore,” said Mr. Hu, who is originally from the poorer inland province of Henan.

In previous years, he said, he signed longer-term contracts with manufacturers like Pegatron and Inventec, both major suppliers for Apple. During peak seasons, he could earn up to 6,000 yuan, or about $885, a month. But he said his previous employers had cut jobs as they introduced robots. In May, he said he worked only day gigs, mostly security jobs, that paid between 60 and 120 yuan, or roughly $9 to $18, each.

“It feels like there won’t be any work left in the future, if things keep developing like this,” he added.

The predicament of Mr. Hu and his fellow workers highlights the challenge China faces as it tries to transition into a high-tech power. China leads the world in technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles, and is vying with the United States for A.I. dominance. But the manufacturing jobs created by those industries are largely for skilled workers. Those roles cannot make up for job losses among less-skilled workers, who still make up one of the biggest parts of China’s work force.

Many people have instead been pushed into daily gig work, either in the same factories where they used to work on contracts, or in other positions, like as security guards.

There are already around 40 million gig workers in China’s manufacturing sector alone, according to Zhang Dandan, a professor at Peking University who has studied Kunshan’s migrant workers. In some large factories, they make up as much as 80 percent of the work force. They have few opportunities to learn new skills or find better employment.

“In the future, as smart manufacturing advances and industrial upgrades continue, the scale of gig work will keep expanding,” Professor Zhang wrote in an article in Chinese media. (She noted that some workers, especially younger ones, actually prefer gig labor, because they see contract work as too restrictive, given the still-low pay.)

She called for worker retraining and stronger protections for their rights. “This is an issue that policymakers cannot afford to ignore,” she wrote.

Recently, some Chinese courts ruled that employers cannot lay people off simply because their jobs were made redundant by A.I. But those rulings have focused on white-collar workers, not blue-collar ones like Mr. Hu.

A Hub for Struggling Workers

The park in Kunshan, Zhenchuan Good Samaritan Park, has become known across China as a gathering place for the struggling or burned out. It is near major factories and a labor market, where recruiters gather every morning from 4 a.m. until they have filled their daily quotas. The park attracts vendors selling cheap haircuts and lunchboxes for less than a dollar, even as middle-class families flock there to enjoy the spotless facilities.

At night, workers sleep in nearby dormitories for about $3. Some stay in the park itself.

Similar clusters of laborers have sprung up around labor markets in Shenzhen and other manufacturing hubs in recent years, frequented by people like Mr. Hu who are looking for daily gig work.

The son of farmers, Mr. Hu started working after middle school, assembling circuit boards and smartphones in factories around Kunshan.

The jobs were tedious and took a physical toll — he was unable to work for a year because of inflammation in his legs that a doctor said could be related to factory chemicals — but they were steady. He was able to save a few thousand dollars each year, he said.

But jobs became scarcer after the coronavirus pandemic. As geopolitical and trade tensions between China and the West intensified, many manufacturers, including in Kunshan, scaled back or moved overseas.

At the same time, China was pushing to become a technology superpower. That meant, in part, investing in robots.

In 2024, Mr. Hu returned to a factory he’d worked at the year before, making gaming laptops. Previously, he said, the workshop had been full of people busily turning screws by hand.

“When I went again, I took a look and, whoa, there weren’t any people anymore,” he said. “It was all robots.”

People were still needed to load trays with batteries and wires, which the robotic arms would then put into place, he said. The managers referred to those jobs as “support positions” for the robots. Mr. Hu estimated that there were half as many people in each workshop as before.

The work was equally, if not more, exhausting, especially because alarms went off if he moved too slowly. He missed socializing with other workers.

“Now it’s all just ice-cold machines, and you’re working yourself to death,” he said.

There was plenty that Mr. Hu admired about China’s robotics prowess. He had passed kiosks with robot baristas, and he enjoyed watching dancing humanoid robots on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. During the pandemic, he recalled, drones delivered his food when he was in quarantine.

But his admiration was always tinged with anxiety. He was afraid that he didn’t have the energy or the ability to learn new skills that would protect him from being replaced.

“If you don’t have an education, it’s not easy to learn those things,” he said.

The morning after he failed to find work, Mr. Hu awoke early as usual. This time, he secured a job as a security guard for a Pokémon festival in Shanghai. At around 6 a.m., he climbed aboard a bus with dozens of other workers to drive to the festival, where he set up barriers to keep overeager children from barreling into a Pikachu parade. He earned about $18 for the day.

At 8 p.m., he boarded the bus back to Kunshan. If the weather was nice, he might stay in the park.

The next morning, he would get up and do it all over again.

Siyi Zhao contributed research.