We were in China about a year and a half ago and noticed the shoddiness of the construction. My husband is a custom builder and was amazed at what they got by with.
I lived on Taiwan in the 60’s, I admire the Chinese people very much. For most of the history the majority have made do with what they had available to work with. Unfortunately for today that carries over. for most of their existence as a people their buildings and common every-day items were utilitarian and designed to be used until it broke. Then it was repair it or tear it down and build the same thing over again.
Their artists through much of their history were amazing, simply amazing. But thanks to the Cultural Revolution they destroyed their heritage and most of the remaining examples are not in the National Museum on Taiwan.
Today though they have taken the worst aspects of their heritage of do just enough to get by and combined it with a state-sponsored version of Capitalism and now they produce things that are designed to just get by for a few years.
Take that attitude and transpose it onto their Buildings and their infra-structure of Roads, Bridges, Railways and Dams. Especially the Three Gorges Dam. And when it starts to fail and it will, then watch out. The CCP will do their utmost to blame anyone but themselves and the country. So by necessity it was foreign enemies who brought down __________ (Whatever).