This is a great point, and there's a close parallel with the way that people make similar comments about Indian developers and completely ignore the many highly-qualified developers who just won't work at lowest-payer wages.

I was thinking the point would be that one reason for the low price is that the manufacturer wants your design so they can use it to build a competing product at their other factory down the road--a joint venture with the local Party boss. You'll never know, but even if you figure it out, what do you imagine you can do about it? Maybe get a court to block the product in the US (causing them a week's delay while they change labels and distributors), but if you're looking for cheap Chinese manufacturing, you won't usually have the resources for any worldwide legal battle against these guys.

And if the design you are paying them to take from you is for some IoT product, the local Party boss can even make bonus points with his superiors by offering them a chance to backdoor it.

I'll bet the cheap tablets in that hotel for tech conference attendees, the tablets with the ethernet and WiFi listening circuitry, could collect a lot of great technology for their makers, and I'll bet they were made in China.

I read the OP as making exactly your point. They were saying that the people they describe make the error you discuss, and get bad results on account of it.

The practice of unethical corner cutting seems somewhat rampant in China, though. And isn't there a reason why cheap tools that easily break are said to be made of "chineesium"?

But it is rampant in whichever location has the whole supply chain.

It was rampant in the US when there was the manufacturing workshop of the world, and rampant in the UK when they were before them.

That's interesting. What causes the correlation?

The full history of commerce. :p I'd suggest looking at the history of food and drug regulation and testing, or weights and measures regulation if you want more. The early years of both UK and US food and pharmaceutical regulation is terrifying!

TL;DR Immature locations cut more corners. More regulation, experience and reputation helps. Consumers are naive. Manufacturers want you to buy the same things many times over your life.

In all markets, There's always going to be someone willing to cut corners to secure a place in a market, or make a fast buck in a mature market. Or maybe it's a new market that can't yet have matured. That's only part of the problem.

As markets mature regulation increases and companies tend to trade more on reputation (not always deserved of course. eg Beats headphones). Now there's an opportunity to trade on the good reputation of wherever (Proudly Made in America! / Britain! / Japan!), whilst selling you cheap crap. That's the other half of the problem. The meaningless label to tell the consumer it's made wherever they currrently believe is good.

In the early 80s most things Japanese were crap. Hifi sounded awful, but had lots of LEDs. Bolts, tools and vehicles were made of soft cheese. Their stainless steel rusted (I kid you not)! Honda made cam chains of special stretchy metal and probably accidentally invented cheese strings. Now Denon make very nice hifi, Teng make very nice tools and their cars are pretty reliable.

Why pay £50 for a Snap On or Britool[1] spanner when there's an almost identically packaged one, made in the same place, for £3 or £40? Only one will last longer than you in daily use. One risks breaking on first use.

So, it would be more accurate to say "isn't there a reason cheap tools break", "cheap materials break", "consumers naively expect $100 quality for $3.99" or "dishonest people are dishonest" than blame a specific locality.

The ONLY thing that has changed is all manufacturers adding built in obsolescence whenever possible. Now even the premium item is made to last "just long enough" (to get away with), but that doesn't make any one location especially good or bad at making stuff.

The only thing geography introduces is the further away it's made, the harder it is to audit your supply chain. Racism and nationalism has no relevance however.

[1] They're no longer British, or often made in Sheffield, they're just another meaningless brand of Stanley trading on 100 years of reputation. You're actually better served buying Teng these days.

I can remember a time when "Made in Japan" was still used to mean "shoddy and cheap".

What do you mean, Doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan.

I think you misread cheap. The "mistake" is assuming the low cost bids will deliver the same high quality you see in other Chinese exports,so not doing proper research / QA.

There was also a flip back in the 90s where "Made In Japan" denoted a better product where in the past the slogan was thought of as cheap.

He wasn't making a point about China, he was making a point about cutting corners.

Exactly — and so you can make the point better simply by saying “cutting corners” directly rather than confusing the issue by using a nationality to imply it.

Fair enough, however with this audience I would expect they recognize that the manufacturing contracts of China, which by their number rather than their nationality, are expressly tailored this way. It is by virtue of the Chinese success as capturing the manufacturing contracts from all other nations in the world that has helped them develop expertise and skill.

This has been an interesting conversation. I found it particularly interesting that my communication came across as disrespectful to the Chinese.

Few people that I've met have any real world experience with contract manufacturing. Of the ones I do, they have mostly dealt with Chinese manufacturers, although I do know one person who worked with a Japanese contract manufacturer and one with a Vietnamese factory. Everyone who has ever asked me about this I point to Bunnie's "Made in China" blog entries [1]. Which convey the challenges and rewards of taking manufacturing to China much more clearly than I ever could.

That said, people who have had experiences with contract manufacturing in China have all had a very similar experience, that experience was that the contract manufacturers have an exquisite expertise in squeezing costs out of manufacturing through creative techniques, not specifically disallowed by the contract. Bunnie writes about this at length in his blog.

The thing here is the law of large numbers. There are so many contract manufacturers, and their business is so competitive, the ones who develop this expertise survive and the ones who don't, they don't survive because nobody accepts their bids. It is important to understand that they are this way because they are good at what they do, not for any negative reason.

It is this exact asymmetry of information which I expect befell the hotel in its attempt to have "cool programmed light switches and TVs." This mechanism, which many people who have used contract manufacturers have experienced, is that an inadequate specifications on the final product can give the manufacturer room to economize on their costs, which increases their profit, and also increases the chance that the bidder will be around for the next bid.

And it is the large number of Chinese contract manufacturers, the ease with which they can be located and contacted via Alibaba or other web sites, that means so many people have had a chance to experience this effect first hand with them. Using Chinese manufacturers as an example of the challenge in my post was my way to communicate what I was talking about in a way that folks who might look this up could find additional resources discussing this challenge (and they would probably find Bunnie's blog too).

The leap here, was to take what I wrote and assume that I said, or believed that because something was made in China, is was cheap.

That was not what I said, and certainly not what I meant. But a mix of people have both read it both ways. So it certainly could have been written more clearly.

I really do recommend Bunnie's blog. Everyone should understand the challenges of working with contract manufacturers, regardless of their nationality. Not tightly specifying a contract (and worse not knowing how to tightly specify a contract) will create situations like the one with the Android controlled light switches.

[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=7