“After all, they make most of the world’s hard drives, a product that requires even finer machining quality and controls.”
Do you believe they developed the technology to produce the hard drives? Or did they acquire it thru “other means”?
They were initially given the technology by Western firms wanting cheap hard drives. Thing is, for the past decade or so there have been indigenous Chinese hard drives made on machines that weren’t provided by outside sources and from designs that didn’t originate in the West. They’re no worse than Seagate’s offerings in terms of quality and longevity.
China’s main problem isn’t that they *can’t* make quality product, it’s that mostly they don’t want to through greed and corruption. Western companies have found that if they pay for and force good QC, they can get good quality product - so it’s not a matter of ‘can’t’.