Comment by Workaccount2
9 hours ago
The Chinese stuff is now more often than not better. You cannot be the world's manufacturer for 30 years and not get good at making stuff.
9 hours ago
The Chinese stuff is now more often than not better. You cannot be the world's manufacturer for 30 years and not get good at making stuff.
I always think it is amusing that some people make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese can only make cheap crap(forgetting all their cell phones and apple laptops come from there).
The American market only wants to buy cheap crap so that is what is made and sent. Usually though the skills involved in making something cut-rate are just as applicable to making something top notch.
American manufacturing skills have atrophied as it has moved to a service economy while as you say the Chinese have been boosting manufacturing for 30 years.
I think it makes more sense to separate "cheap" from "crap". US/EU never valued East Asian labor at equal value. Rather than complaining, East Asia just "let them have it" and it wrecked industrial base for both in the long run.
I mean, it doesn't make sense that typical guidance units for missiles are more expensive than DJI drones. Everyone thinks Chinese products got a little more expensive lately, so they must have quit doing cheap part of cheap and crap, and it's just my gut feeling, but, I would be not so sure about that.
Maybe America needs a planned economy and minority ”re-education” camps to boost production.
Or maybe just better accounting for the total lifecycle and disposal of products. If a company had to pay a bond to cover the long term impact of their shit products I bet we'd see higher quality goods.
Good news everyone!
I was thinking a snarky thought reading another comment in the chain: "DJI and Anker aren't Chinese brands, because they're good and they have brand reputation".
"Chinese" in my ape brain is Harbor Freight junk, or cheap houseware from Amazon with names like "KRLFOCGY".
Honestly, even harbor freight has some pretty good tools these days. They do have disposable level crap, but even one level above that is quite serviceable.
2 replies →
It's very common to have multiple chinese brands competing against each other, throwing out better products every year... with western companies maybe having one or two products.
See something like Roomba vs. Xiaomi/Roborock/Deebot/Ecovacs/etc.
This is a real example how western IP stagnates western economy and it's making it not competitive - the IP law makes it easy for incumbents to kill of iteration and competition.
It shouldn't be a surprise to people that quality isn't there if you buy a nameless thing at the cheapest possible price, regardless of where it's made.
On the other hand, China has major brands in many markets. DJI drones, Anker chargers and cords, Lenovo computers, Polestar cars. TCL TVs and Haier appliances (which I believe also owns the GE consumer brand) are also very common. Roborock vacuums seem to be considered a better value than Roomba now.
It's an interesting counterpoint to the old cliche about paying for brands. Clearly buying on price alone is foolish, as is not considering the reputation of the maker of a product.
It's the exact same thing that happened with Japanese cars. Believe it or not, Japanese autos used to be considered cheap junk in the 70s and early 80s.
Same thing with Germany in the 19th century: "inferior copies of English designs". Those who don't know history will be forced to repeat past mistakes.
I've recently been putting together a large aquarium build for the first time in ~15 years, and it's really shocking how good and how cheap the Chinese stuff is now. Of particular note is lighting, where the price/W on non-Chinese equipment is 4-10x the Chinese equivalent.