A lot of the stuff from China today reminds me of the crap being made in Japan in the 50s. But there is a lot of high-quality product manufactured in China. I suppose those have strict oversight by the US companies getting the product made there.
I worked in China for seven months from late ‘76 to early summer ‘77. Their “management” practices were absolutely abysmal as was their “productivity.” It took five to ten people to get done what one person could do in the US. They’ve come a long ways in many areas since then.
I bought a portable patio cart on wheels this summer for my new pizza oven. It came with three manufacturing defects (one part had no holes drilled in it, one part wasn’t rolled enough to capture a pin, and one part was really bent at the factory). It had taken me over an hour to assemble the cart and, wouldn’t you know it? The bad parts were the very last ones to go onto the finished assembly. Amazon told me to disassemble the cart and send it back. I told them there was no way in hell that I would do that, just send me an advance replacement and I’ll take out the parts I need. I had to escalate two levels at Amazon to get to a “Yes.” So BOTH the China product and Amazon service were infuriating.
I think China is worse than Japan because they have an avenue to get cheat (aka cheap) crap into the US through Amazon or online sales that never happened in the 50’s and 60’s. Sears or Montgomery-Ward would send that crap back in the 50’s or 60’s if it were not made to spec.
Take remote power taps or power strips or whatever you call them..... you could go into Walmart and buy one that weighs 1/3rd of what the $19.99 does for $4.99. You could order one back on Amazon when I studied this for as low as $3.99. I just looked out of curiosity and the cheapest now is 9.99 (damned inflation).
We bought a bunch and the wire gauge and overall weight/metal content were quite different depending on prices even though they advertised the same capacity and that directly impacts safety when you are running electrical loads.