PLA News, Pics, and Discussion

ougoah said:

There is a history of people cutting corners NOT a history of poor quality of military equipment. I think the example is befitting. Therefore it wouldn't be such a surprise to learn the manufacturer of the armour plates are using substandard grades of steel. I've been dealing with this issue at work for a while with some Chinese contractors who do everything right for the sample batches and then proceed to slowly degrade the quality over time. One particular example with regards to steel as well, a Chinese manufacturer slowly left out vital metal working processes in some nuts they manufacture which led to sudden catastrophic failure and upon months of investigations (because the failure left over $10M in damages to equipment) it was discovered the factory foreman was skipping steps in hardening the material. The reason for that was to save the factory a measly sum of money.

Get your heads out of the sand. You can start by growing a thicker skin. I'm not even one of those FLG trolls and vehemently pro-China pro-CCP and there's no need to make such a drama out of a small, and accidental criticism. I stand corrected on this particular piece of news but there is definitely an underlying problem or at least a former problem that immediately made me assume the news was true. It being in Chinese added to the trustworthiness and since my Chinese is far from ideal, correcting me I think should have been enough. In any case, I hope cutting corners becomes increasingly rare in China and it seems to be traveling in that direction.

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superdog said:

Perhaps you mixed up my reply with somebody else's. I'm not making a drama out of anything, I didn't mention anything about FLG or pro-CCP, I'm simply asking if you have better examples than a food safety incident in 2008 to support your speculation that "it's so common" for Chinese(-made) military gears to be of poor quality?

"There is a history of people cutting corners NOT a history of poor quality of military equipment"

Sorry but that statement makes no sense. Cutting corners implied poor quality. An armored vehicle getting easily penetrated due to using shitty steel (if you believe that happened) is by definition a showcase of poor quality. If they had a habit of cutting corners but magically maintained good quality in their products, that would be called optimization.

Anyway, if I understand you correctly, the second example you're giving now is that you've met some corner cutting Chinese contractors at work. But again, how is that supposed to be generalized into the practice of Chinese equipment suppliers for the PLA?

I am doubting this logic because from what I saw and personally experienced, China today is a manufacturing hub for the world and is steadily supplying tons of good quality products/components for foreign and domestic brands alike. This includes ships, cars, trains and cranes, all of which uses steel heavily. Of course you can still find corner cutting contractors if you cut corner on cost or have poor supply chain management, but it doesn't mean you can take a few bad examples and then assume it is common practice for all, especially for the military sector.

It'd be more relevant if we can see that PLA suffers more equipment failures than its rivals (or whatever you consider as "world standard"), but I'm not seeing that trend.

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plawolf said:

Indeed, it is a common misconception that Chinese somehow cannot do QC or build high quality products, with shoddy Walmart products or fringe examples cited as what is the norm.

There is a thing call the China price, and China speed, where China can make things faster and cheaper than anyone else at the same quality. But even China cannot do magic. If you want a product at a stupidly low price point, of course you are not going to be premium quality.

What most westerners and those who grow up in the west don’t realise is that Walmart products are of shit quality because that’s what Walmart wanted and specified to be made. It makes simple good business sense for Walmart to be willing to accept higher defect and returns if the extra margin they make on all products sold is a lot more.

There is a reputation problem in China with general consumer products in that there are so many fakes that it is sometimes hard to get what you wanted, but even than that’s really only a problem if you as a consumer is trying to penny pinch and buys from questionable sources to try to save some money.

If you are willing to pay fair market prices, you can absolutely get high quality products made in China. It’s what major companies around the world do.

There is also an added level of protection for the likes of the PLA when they make procurement orders because they are the state. You have to be mad to try to cheat the PLA, as the full force of Chinese law enforcement will come after you if you do.

The only way you can get poor quality products into the PLA is if you had seriously high corrupt connections, but thankfully that is also a thing of the past now, as no one is powerful enough to get away with that these days. It’s just not worth the risk anymore.

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ougoah said:

Dude you are basically arguing no bad eggs exists because look at all the good eggs. Can we seriously stop being Indian bhakt levels of defensive and sensitive. I'm not doubting any of the above FFS. I'm done trying to make the point.

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ougoah said:

It's really quite simple. Cutting corners in China exists (some examples given) and while it also exists elsewhere, we're talking about China. Your counter example of China being the industrial hub of the world doesn't prove there aren't cases of cost cutting. Since there obviously were, therefore it's reasonable for someone to have imagined the "fakes" news of the manufacturer using substandard steel, to have been genuine. No thought crime has been committed here relax.

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plawolf said:

What kind of lame strawman is that?

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superdog said:

If you can't see the difference then there won't be a meaningful discussion.

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