>The reason most people still believe that Chinese-made stuff is poor quality is

I think most people just buy trash at WalMart and Amazon and it's 99% Chinese disposable junk. That doesn't mean that China is incapable of producing high quality goods, but just that the average interaction that people have with Chinese goods are low quality.

It's the manufacturing equivalent of "How could the government be efficient? Haven't you ever been to the DMV?" (set aside that fact that many DMVs seem to be quite efficient these days)

>they will do what they are told and they are usually told “make this as cheap as possible” by whoever is paying the bills

It's more complicated than this. Historically, Chinese manufacturing has been notorious for quietly undermining the quality of the product to improve their margins over time, in a way that the commissioning brand doesn't notice. If a Chinese manufacturer quotes you a price too good to be true, they're probably quoting you at-cost and will build in their margin later, once the orders start flowing in.

I find that Chinese manufacturing offers the complete range of quality for every price point. At reasonable prices, the quality meets or exceeds that of other countries. But if you want something cheap and cheaply made, you can find that as well. And at the extreme, you still have counterfeit parts and products.

Apple in China is a great book and shows how good China is on focusing on quality when that is the given objective.

> While I reckon some other countries still have specialist manufacturing in key areas that surpasses China

I don't think this is true. Maybe super specialist things like chip manufacturing products, but it's guaranteed China is spending heavily on R&D to develop their own. When it comes to cars / car parts they will be on par with if not surpassing most countries.

Also keep in mind China's sudden onset had a big impact on European and US car manufacturing, with VW / VAG closing major factories in Germany. Mind you, that's also because VAG was the biggest car manufacturer in China, until suddenly BYD and co opened up their factories and dominated the market in a short amount of time.

> The reason most people still believe that Chinese-made stuff is poor quality is because they will do what they are told and they are usually told “make this as cheap as possible” by whoever is paying the bills.

I’m reminded of all the dismissals people made about the skill levels of Indian software developers when the explanation was that the more skilled ones knew they could do better than the MBAs were offering to make the savings sound even more impressive.

It's not just that they do what they are told, whether that is low quality or high quality.

It's that if you don't have a way to measure quality yourself (you're not an expert), or if you don't ask for exact specific features/qualities even if you offer a high budget and ask for high quality, manufacturers absolutely will cut corners, do stupid things, etc. to increase their own margin at the expense of quality and just hope you are none the wiser.

The US had the same culture in certain periods and certain industries, so I am not suggesting it's some innate Chinese characteristic. The meat factories exposed in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, where he documented unsanitary conditions, spoiled meat, rat infestations etc come to mind.

But one cannot just ignore that the China of today has had problems with fake baby formula, fake alcohol, fake medicine, fake everything and expect that that doesn't make its way into manufacturing of other classes of goods.

I wish China didn't have such a hostile government to the West. Because I'd love to buy a BYD car and see this for myself, or try the Xiaomi car that MKBHD was so keen on. But because of the hostility I kind of get why there are bans.

BYD cars in China are not very good. But to export them they need to be higher quality to meet criteria. I would never buy one in China. Happily own one outside of China.