Comment by shunia_huang
20 hours ago
Quite the contrary to the points made in some of the comments mentioning that China is far ahead in applying automation tools/workflows in factories, which then shaped the competitive benifits in manufacture industries.
No, it's not.
It's actually because China is lowring the requirement/quality for delivery and makes everthing for the comsumer market to degrade rapidly so that the manufacturers has the chance to involve because of the involving needs for newer/better products.
It is a common sense here in China that a lot of manufactural products have better quality from imported sources, it is the growing needs from the comsumers that require products to have newer/more functionality even if it has shorter lifetime, or event 'better', the product is looking for growth so they are designed to be short lifetime so the manufacturer and the customer both willing to upgrade in the future.
Excuse my language/grammer.
> It's actually because China is lowring the requirement/quality for delivery and makes everthing for the comsumer market to degrade rapidly so that the manufacturers has the chance to involve because of the involving needs for newer/better products.
Isn't the requirements set by the company outsourcing to China? Because as far as I can tell in China you can produce with all ranges of quality so it feels a bit too simplistic to blame "planned obsolescence" to China alone as the whole chain profits from it (besides the end-user of-course).
This feel true 15 years ago, but now everything is from China, both lower, mid and higher end market.
> It is a common sense here in China that a lot of manufactural products have better quality from imported sources
Can you name a few items that you feel that way?
My impression as a consumer is that everything comes from China nowadays, even the reliable brands. The main difference I think is the time spend around product design and fine tuning the manufacturer's process. Think about it, there's a reason why they have to make it very visible that the product is "designed with love in colorado" when all the manufacturing jobs are in China.
Here in the west it is common sense that between products made in China and in the West the main difference is that the later category barely exists and if it does it comes at mostly unaffordable prices.
If you are as far ahead in manufacturing as China is, of course you can dictate the terms of competition and they want to increase consumption. I have zero doubt that this is anything but a deliberate choice, which could be altered by Chinese manufacturers if wanted to.
The myth of incompetent Chinese engineering and manufacturing is just that. And believing in it puts you in a dangerous place, where some day some Chinese company can do everything you can for half the price, which has happened again and again.