Espionage involving China

plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I think some people are assigning more blame to Chinese manufacturers then is deserved.

Chinese manufacturers manufacture to the customers’ design specifications.

Where a manufacturer failed to meet those requirements is when you see product recalls.

Now, just how many product recalls have there been compared to accusations of poor quality?

Yes, there are cowboy companies in China, as there are everywhere, but cowboy companies tend to go out of business a lot faster in China than elsewhere because of how fierce the competitive environment is in China. And rarely are Chinese cowboy manufacturers around long enough to get picked up by major foreign retailers. That is why Chinese exported products are often of higher quality than stuff you can find in general consumption in China. Which ironically is also why so many Chinese people are so willing to believe western accusations of poor quality.

Logically speaking, yes, a customer will be annoyed if the product they buy fails immediately after they buy it and they have to return it to the store for a refund or replacement. But they will be a hell of a lot more annoyed and remember it more if said product didn’t break right away, and instead broken shortly after the warranty on it expired.

The Chinese manufacturer gets the bad rep even if they manufactured the product perfectly according to design specifications; when it is really the design that is the cause of the poor quality.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. China price does not defy economics or physics. If you pay peanuts, you should expect monkey models.

In many ways, this is a self-correcting project as China move up the value chain and low end, low margin manufacturing moves to lower wage cost economies like Vietnam and the Philippines.
 
broadsword

broadsword

Brigadier
ougoah said:
No it won't sink in until there's a Huawei equivalent in Shampoo etc. I know this is a particularly frustrating aspect of what we could describe as modern Chinese manufacturing culture. There is a serious deficiency in planning and building for the long term. Many, in fact probably most Chinese businesses exist only to make profits. They may be producing something because they have the ability to and have some economic or technical advantages. Rarely do people get into a certain line of business because they have pride in developing a product. This is where bad management and decision policies can destroy a company and a nation's reputation.

I'm generalising and being selective here but there are plenty examples of hopeless product design (functional) showing a lack of awareness. In my line of work, a supplier uncovered a serious cost cutting measure put into place by a Chinese supplier who failed to inform them and resulted in multi million dollar material damages as a result of steel material failure in the mining sector. This is an example of one poor player ruining the reputation of many honest and decent players just by association. If Chinese government can limit these poor examples, as a whole, Chinese industry would be increasingly considered in positive light.

But we're also ignoring the other side where Chinese products need to be competitive somehow and taking shortcuts and shaving margins are the only levers to play with in order to be competitive and remain in business. There's plenty of examples of low quality foreign products too along with a great deal of fine quality Chinese products. We just never hear of those even though they exist in perfect balance to the rest of the quality ecosystem. Cheap prices almost certainly mean cheap quality, high prices and manufacturer reputation STILL do not guarantee quality. Overall Chinese manufactured goods have experienced improving quality levels. Compare products from the 80s to those of the 00s and today. Manufacturing abilities converge to a point that is determined by currently available technologies and science. Choosing where to toggle your levels depend on the economics of your business. The issue here is China simply manufactures a great deal of all the world's commercial products including but not limited to the low end and cheap ones. Compare a $100 Chinese tool with a $100 Russian or India tool and the Chinese one is objectively WAY better thanks to manufacturing scale. Economics, not science. But do those Indian and Russian tools exist in your hardware store in the west? No. Why? Because they're NOT competitive price/quality but they do exist!

The irony is the whole made in China quality joke is the reason for China's economic miracle producing according to scale. Japan used it in the past and still do in some areas.
Click to expand...

You know something about steel.

Many of the China made brands of sous vide recirculator, including a very famous Canadian appliance brand, use low grade stainless steel. So some users complain after one use, they could see rust and that was the reason they gave one star. On Aliexpress, I contacted two sellers which enjoy high sales volume, to enquire the grade of the stainless steel. They never replied. From the pictures, they look very similar to the Canadian brand. But there is one Chinese brand that uses 403 stainless steel. I believe the lower grade ones use 430. This Chinese brand is in the food preparation business, so perhaps they are more conscious of the industry requirements.

What is frustrating is that why don't they all use 403? It is not going to double the cost of the machines.
 
Last edited:
broadsword

broadsword

Brigadier
plawolf said:
Yes, there are cowboy companies in China, as there are everywhere, but cowboy companies tend to go out of business a lot faster in China than elsewhere because of how fierce the competitive environment is in China. And rarely are Chinese cowboy manufacturers around long enough to get picked up by major foreign retailers.
Click to expand...

I have reservations. I don't think that happens in the real world. But I don't have any info to back me up either.
 
A

antiterror13

Brigadier
please compare $100 tools made in China and made in the USA (same price) which one you would choose? ...... 99.999% would choose the Chinese one

People who complain that Chinese products were crap are the one who can't afford expensive stuff and expecting $5 Chinese tool has the same quality as $100 American tool
 
SamuraiBlue

SamuraiBlue

Captain
antiterror13 said:
please compare $100 tools made in China and made in the USA (same price) which one you would choose? ...... 99.999% would choose the Chinese one

People who complain that Chinese products were crap are the one who can't afford expensive stuff and expecting $5 Chinese tool has the same quality as $100 American tool
Click to expand...
Actually it's a hit and/or miss situation.
I buy a lot of Chinese made electronics for concept of theory type applications (audio/visual live-broadcasting) and I have found that some works great and other don't work at all even for the same item.
Basically it's a quality/reliability assurance issue where they use the cheapest items for parts within the supply chain.
 
A

antiterror13

Brigadier
SamuraiBlue said:
Actually it's a hit and/or miss situation.
I buy a lot of Chinese made electronics for concept of theory type applications (audio/visual live-broadcasting) and I have found that some works great and other don't work at all even for the same item.
Basically it's a quality/reliability assurance issue where they use the cheapest items for parts within the supply chain.
Click to expand...

did you buy the cheap ones and expect the same quality as 10x more expensive one ? why did you but Chinese electronic in the first place anyway?

Most good branded Chinese products are great, even 1/2 or 1/3 the price of US or EU or Japan

I also bought a lot Japanese electronics, they are great mostly, but I do experiences some faulty product after short period of time. My point is ... the issues are not exclusively Chinese products
 
vesicles

vesicles

Colonel
localizer said:
lol 20-30 years Chinese complain about theft...

Chinese already complaining about theft:
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Click to expand...

Yep! As soon as you start innovating, you want to protect your investments and you begin to hate thieves. This was why, in ancient China, anyone caught stealing their tea cultivating tech or silk manufacturing would be punished severely. You have to admire the courage of those European and American spies who tried to steal Chinese techs...
 
solarz

solarz

Brigadier
antiterror13 said:
please compare $100 tools made in China and made in the USA (same price) which one you would choose? ...... 99.999% would choose the Chinese one

People who complain that Chinese products were crap are the one who can't afford expensive stuff and expecting $5 Chinese tool has the same quality as $100 American tool
Click to expand...

I have, on many occasions, had personal experience of cheaper Chinese products performing better than supposedly higher quality, more expensive non-Chinese products.

When I went shopping for a hatchet a couple of months ago for a camping trip, I bought a 30$ hatchet from Canadian Tire before finding out that Dollarama carried a 4$ hatchet. I took both hatchets on my camping trip, and the 4$ hatchet worked better than the 30$ one when I was chopping kindling. The 30$ hatchet had a metal handle while the 4$ one had a fiberglass handle. The metal handle passed most of the shock of the impact to my arm, while the fiberglass handle absorbed most of that impact.

Needless to say, I returned the 30$ hatchet.
 
O

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Manufacturing is 100% dependent on physical qualities and the practices employed by the business. It has nothing to do with nationality unless culture starts playing a huge part of it. Chinese industry has come a long way since the 90s and the vast majority of well respected branded manufacturers all do more or less the proper things and have very little difference in their practices compared to a Japanese or German one. Any real differences come down as a consequence of pricing.

Most people complain about the smallest issue on a Chinese product but go WELL out of their way to defend a faulty "superior" product. I see my german stove failing once a year because a heating component is poorly engineered. My German watch cost over $3000 and has terribly misaligned bezel to dial and bezel insert to dial. My dad's Korean phone stops working after two years the battery life is abysmal. My Chinese kettle and microwave have been working faultlessly for years. Same with my computer and phone. Then there are some Chinese products that work for a week before falling apart. It's stupid to make gross generalisations but it's easier for people so they do. Until just about all Chinese products lift themselves in quality and many Huawei like companies become household names in quality and innovation, Chinese products will continue to be stigmatised. And this is without the Americans constantly playing their games because they hate the competition.

To be honest about huge issue is the retailer marking up Chinese products they've imported. It makes the product seem almost a normal price when it cost the retailer a few cents or dollars per unit to get in stock. The retailers almost only sell Chinese products because the margins for them are the greatest. Both Chinese manufacturers and product consumers stand much to gain if the whole supply chain can be overhauled to become more efficient. So much for capitalism in the west. What the west calls capitalism is just a club for price gauging on any and every level.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top