There is a vocal crew among Freepers who echo many on the right wing’s(and many on the far left wing) sentiment that everything that China makes is junk. Those who say it in boast or jest can have a laugh but those who truly believe that are in a for rude shock. Does China produce a lot of junk? You bet - because there is a huge world market for cheap stuff of dubious quality. What many American critics and Freepers fail to recognize or admit is that China also produces many very high end items of excellent quality. The best way to understand Chinese quality is to realize that the bulk of products coming out of China are made to a foreign buyers specification. WalMart wants an electric can opener it can sell for $5 - some Chinese company will make them a $5 dollar can opener. Pioneer wants high end stereo electronics made to their technical specs, some Chinese company will make them. Just because the Chinese produce tons of cheap crap doesn’t mean they can’t (and aren’t) producing billions of dollars of high quality equipment and components.
With automobiles don’t think that the cheap Chinese cars that are sold in China or abroad will be what hits US markets. The Chinese will produce what the American consumer wants (and guys like Warren Buffet will figure out what that is)- They will produce a product with enough quality and reliability to satisfy the market and they will make it for less money than US and European manufacturers. Don’t kid yourself Americans.
Unfortunately Chinese manufacturers are also infamous for profit enhancing techniques such as ‘quality fade’ and the substitutions using cheaper (albeit toxic) materials.
bump.
Dan Malone, construction manager for Garneau Manufacturing, based in Morinville, Alberta, Canada, an energy service company that works with many imports, said tests on a lot of 80 tons of Chinese steel tube products found "the welds failed horribly." Malone said there was no question that if the steel had been fabricated into a finished product and installed it would have failed and "would have killed somebody."
http://kipbiz.us/businessresource/forecast/archive/New_Threat_from_China_Steel_070907.html
Ok let's have a few examples. Names we've heard, things we can buy. Stuff that's been around a while. And by the way, "SOMY" TV's and "CHISCO" routers don't count.
I agree. China is just a huge, cheap, labor pool.
Design, quality, marketing, etc. come from the company selling the product.
Its just easy for the head company to blame their Chinese manufacturing when something bad happens. The head company should have a periodic test program set-up for their own products. If the Chinese products don’t measure up to their specs they shouldn’t accept them.
I don’t care what the Chinese make or who chooses to buy their crap. Why I object to is forcing Americans to effectively subsidize Chinese industry through federal financing of unsustainable debt, burdensome business taxes and regulations, tolerance for illegal immigration while socializing its costs, and trade policies that ignore the effect of foreign tariffs on our exports while refusing to a sensible reciprocity. American industry is being purposefully strangled to support the interests of a few large transnational banks and companies whose interests and those of the federal government have become intertwined. This is not capitalism - it is fascism.