Comment by eru
1 day ago
There's lots of high quality Chinese stuff, too. Why do you say it as if quality and Chinese don't go together?
1 day ago
There's lots of high quality Chinese stuff, too. Why do you say it as if quality and Chinese don't go together?
It's an old stereotype - between 1990 and 2010 or so, Chinese manufacturing was usually seen as of a lower quality.
This was often unfair and incorrect even then, but it's clearly mad now. Chinese products run the gamut from the lowest to the highest ends in almost every consumer field. But some people hew to old stereotypes.
50 years ago when I was a kid... Japan and Taiwan were known for making cheap junk. They shook the reputation.
Now I feel old - get off my lawn.
I'm honestly happy for Japan, Taiwan, and China. It's great that they make cool stuff.
I just wish we still did too.
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When I go to any store, the Chinese version is ALWAYS lower quality. I've yet to see the opposite.
Where are you going to shop? And how do you know something is the 'Chinese version'? It's not like for example Apple advertises where they assemble their products.
For a concrete example, we get very good rice varieties specifically from certain parts of China. (But here in Singapore people also really care about rice. You generally can't buy good and fresh rice in the middle of the Polish countryside for example.) And, yes, for this product the 'Chinese' variety is superior to eg generic Thai rice.
I put 'Chinese' in scare-quotes, because just like you don't just drink 'French wine' when you know what you are doing, you don't just eat 'Chinese' rice.
For a lot of tea drinking paraphernalia, the most top of the line items also come from China. Even if you are into, say, Japanese tea.
I either look at the label or do research beforehand. I buy from all kind of places.
I wasn't thinking of agricultural products, but rather anything manufactured. As an example, appliances made in Germany will have a cord long enough that you can actually plug into the wall, while the one that's made in China will have a useless 10-centimeter cord that would force me to use an extension.
Your mileage might vary, this is just my experience, but it's been pretty consistent for a few decades, with things going downhill in the past I'd say 5 years or so.
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Historically, they're lax on regulation. Hence the association with bad quality.
Regulation doesn't have much to do with quality. For example, there's plenty of regulation to make food safe, but almost nothing about making your food high quality in the sense of taste and texture.
You get quality from competition and customers opening their wallets for quality.
Another example: Apple assembles some nice consumer hardware in China. Their quality doesn't depend on regulation.
The regulations often change the economics of production to favour improved quality/attempting to sell upmarket.
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And also have the proverb, “If you can cheat, then cheat”. I guess it's just part of their culture.
We do that too, it just isn't a proverb.