I remember how until quite recently, the West viewed the East, particularly China, as a backward region. People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk'. In a remarkably short time, that perception has completely flipped. Now it's the West that seems to be falling behind...
> People would even dismissively use the term 'Chinese junk'
I still do. Amazon in Europe is completely filled with Chinese junk, it's nigh impossible to find anything EU/US produced in certain categories. It became Alibaba with markup.
MaxGripe says "...that perception has completely flipped"
I avoid goods made in mainland China but seek out those made in Taiwan b/c they are exquisitely tooled. Both are Chinese but mainland manufactury severely lags Taiwan's.
> While China claimed a breakthrough in 2017, manufacturing a ballpoint pen all by itself and “ending a long-term reliance on imported [ballpoint pen tips],” as of 2021 the country was still reportedly 80% dependent on imported ballpoints.
> In fact, Chinese imports of ballpoints pens (comprising the ballpoint and ink reservoir) have more than doubled since 2017, from 12 million USD to nearly 28 million USD last year.
> Machine tools are machines that make other machines. China is a leading producer of machine tools, accounting for about 31% the world’s output in 2021 (p.10, fig. 12)—ahead of Germany (13%), Japan (12%), the US (9%), and Italy (8%). But China is heavily reliant on foreign technology for high-end machine tools: in 2021, it was 91% dependent on foreign firms for the most advanced machine tools.
China just doesn't have the ability to do high precision, high quality engineering and manufacturing.
I am not saying that everything that comes out of China is bad, but that there are limits to what can be produced at a high level of quality there. You can buy simple tools, like knives, at a good level of quality from China, but anything that requires complex tooling is likely not actually made in China.
For that matter, smartphones aren't "made in china". They are /assembled/ there. China doesn't make the CPU in an iPhone, TSMC did. China doesn't make the /machines/ that engrave silicon in TSMC's factories, ASML does. And so on, and on, and on.
If something is truly mainly made in China, with Chinese tools, and it's complex to manufacture, you should avoid like the plague.
China hasn't really become the manufacturing capital of the world. It's just the place where a lot of people are paid to use screwdrivers, glue, and package things.
