Why is "Made in China" bad?

[texas_jack]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

There are some terrific new audio manufacturers of note in China. Made in China is not always a bad thing. There are pockets of excellence.

They make good tea, and pandas.

 

[a tailor]

Originally Posted by mizanation

i remember american auto workers destroying japanese cars, i remember a chinese man getting beat to death at a denny's for being a "***", but i don't remember horribly poor quality...

you dont remember the era before world war 2?
after ww2 its a different japan.

 

[Artisan Fan]

I'd be interested in learning more about these audio manufacturers -- I'm in the market to revamp my entire audio system... do they have a website?

Get the Acoustic Sounds and MusicDirect catalogs and look for the Cayin and Shanling brands and a few others whose names escape me.

 

[LabelKing]

There is also Taurus.

 

[acidboy]

Originally Posted by amerikajinda

I'd be interested in learning more about these audio manufacturers -- I'm in the market to revamp my entire audio system... do they have a website?

AFAIK, several American and Canadian brand speakers have already outsourced their speaker production to China since the 90's.

 

[cldpsu]

Originally Posted by lee_44106

So far,
-child labor
-forced labor
-outsourced labor to some foreigners, so I don't like because I/my fellow Americans/Italians/French lost jobs to these foreigners

All greast examples of "poor" quality

Thank your fellow americans buddy boy.

 

[norcaltransplant]

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

There are some terrific new audio manufacturers of note in China. Made in China is not always a bad thing. There are pockets of excellence.

Quad, long known for their high-end electrostat speakers, recently (c.2001) released a conventional box speaker with 3/4" MDF cabinetry, kevlar drivers, and beautiful wood lacquer finishes. The sound was so good that I bought them for a mid-fi setup. Acoustically similar to the rather dry B&W Nautilus series at about 1/2 the price.

 

[rgpuppy]

Originally Posted by mizanation

no need to "wait and see" about decent chinese quality. there is stuff coming out of china now that is as good as any mass-produced product in the world.


Ok someone said ask one who works in the industry...I do.

I have traveled the world sourcing fabric and production for apparel. I have not done it mush the past 5 years or so but am now traveling to China, VN, Bangladesh, India, etc...

The poster above says the ley phrase of why China product is looked at as inferior to "made in...Italy, France etc...

MASS PRODUCED...most Italian factories are really workshops...set up to produce a very small qty (in reative terms for teh industry) where as china is designed to crank out large qty. If you want 4000 units a week of a pant you can find places in Italy, but if you want to place 100,000 units and have 30 days for the production (exclusive of fabric etc) you only find that in places like China, India, etc...

Why? the availability of labor. In "old world countires factories were set up to employee locals...and most towns were small...so the jobs became part of who and what the people of locale were...often times jobs were/are passed from Generation to generation. In new world markets works are imported and housed at the factory comppound so you have a larger labor pool...not to mention the overall population differences.

The other factor is history and longevity....Italians have been making clothing for how long?? China is a relative new comer to the "world" market in apparel....over the last 30 or so years. As European works gained skill and became craftsman they taught others the craft...while in china it is still a young persons job...but just trust me it is changing.

I go into many many factories where the head eng or tailor is of Italian or other traditional apparel making heritage.

Child labor or slave type labor and other issues exsist but not only in places like China...here in the states as well.

You can also look at countries like Colombia or even India where the economy was closed for so long...they developed skills as refined as "italy" and do excellent work.

 

[zjpj83]

Saw this today and immediately thought of this thread. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/28/chi....ap/index.html

 

[GBR]

It should not be but most people still associate it with products from the 1950s or the overhyped fakes.

 

[username79]

Originally Posted by mizanation

^^^ made in japan never had a stigma of poor quality.

That's not true.

 

[crazyquik]

Originally Posted by amerikajinda

on a much less serious note -- the main character in the documentary -- as well as some of the other girls -- were wearing those jeans that are all bleached on the fronts of both legs... all the way from the front of the ankles up to the thighs - these two long white streaks of white... I really don't like that particular type of distressing....

Some Chinese person probably painted that stuff on there by hand.

I work with folks who travel to China pretty regularly.

There is a lot of construction going on and most of it is in the 400k+ sq feet at a time factories. Some of them are a million square feet...built just to fill up American big box stores.

Most factories still have segregated dorms for the workers, even married workers live seperately. Can't have the he-workers and she-workers living together! Some simply have quonset huts for dorms. At the more complex factories, the workers get paid more and can then go out and get apartments. Probably not garment workers though....

Even products that have to be "finished" or "coated" (picture frames, furniture, metal goods like lamps/locks/metal bathroom stuff, patio furniture, etc) are sometimes still coated in factories with dirt floors. Bare hands and arms are still plunged down into chemical vats. To quote one factory owner when asked why they didn't get the worker some gloves so his hands wouldn't fall off, "hands fall off, get new man". I guess that was how it was here when we built the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge too though. If a man fell to his death, there were people lined up waiting to take his job.

Some factories try to give thier workers gloves, ear plugs, safety glasses, etc. Many times the workers refuse them, and there is no OSHA to enforce workforce safety.

Right now there is a HUGE difference in the best and worst factories, and there is a race by First World nations to "lock up" or buy these factories in joint ventures.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by crazyquik

Some Chinese person probably painted that stuff on there by hand.

I work with folks who travel to China pretty regularly.

There is a lot of construction going on and most of it is in the 400k+ sq feet at a time factories. Some of them are a million square feet...built just to fill up American big box stores.

Most factories still have segregated dorms for the workers, even married workers live seperately. Can't have the he-workers and she-workers living together! Some simply have quonset huts for dorms. At the more complex factories, the workers get paid more and can then go out and get apartments. Probably not garment workers though....

Even products that have to be "finished" or "coated" (picture frames, furniture, metal goods like lamps/locks/metal bathroom stuff, patio furniture, etc) are sometimes still coated in factories with dirt floors. Bare hands and arms are still plunged down into chemical vats. To quote one factory owner when asked why they didn't get the worker some gloves so his hands wouldn't fall off, "hands fall off, get new man". I guess that was how it was here when we built the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge too though. If a man fell to his death, there were people lined up waiting to take his job.

Some factories try to give thier workers gloves, ear plugs, safety glasses, etc. Many times the workers refuse them, and there is no OSHA to enforce workforce safety.

Right now there is a HUGE difference in the best and worst factories, and there is a race by First World nations to "lock up" or buy these factories in joint ventures.

Also, China has never had any convictions of that mostly Western notion of "human rights".

 

[Alias]

The West itself didn't have any notion about "human rights" until people started complaining very loudly.

 

[LabelKing]

Originally Posted by Alias

The West itself didn't have any notion about "human rights" until people started complaining very loudly.
As far as I know, there have never been any philosophical works written explicitly concerning "human rights" in China; the ruling philosophy of China and most of Imperial Asia was Confucianism which while in its original tenets showed some notions that humanity was universal, the overall expression is a bit cynical, "(people) by nature close together; in practice, diverging". The early 20th century anti-Imperial revolutionary leaders were convinced that while people had so-called "people's rights" (property rights, etc.) such as accorded by regimes, they didn't necessarily have what one would call unconditional basic human rights. However, Confucius is unusually enigmatic and nebulous, and so it's difficult to ascertain particular points whereas the Western philosophers often entertained much more explicit goals.