beijing okay

Fading Quality

China has terrible export quality goods. What's worse, is that China has far, far poorer quality domestic goods. We are being sold some terrible quality over in the East. Besides the obvious issue of food safety, there is also questionable structural integrity in new construction, outright lies rather than misleading advertising and virtually no consumer protection. The last few years has seen a lot of false accusations made about foreign "flawed" products in order to boost local business, since more well heeled Chinese truly prefer to buy Japanese lipstick or German cars. The sad truth is that even the Chinese don't trust their own products and must be compelled to buy them. If prices were the same, I'm very willing to bet that Chinese would buy imports exclusively.

Years, years and years ago Chinese goods were considered fine and valuable, which is basically unthinkable now. Every single thing is now made on the ultra-cheap. The Chinese have lessened their standards to the point that they have products for sale that don't even serve their intended purpose, or, at worse, are completely dangerous. I understand that Chinese cannot afford, for the most part, quality goods, but how is it that "Made in China" goods in America are of substantially higher quality yet the prices can be fairly similar?

From my experience alone I've had spoons that break in half on first use, counterfeit shampoo, pans that transfer metal grit to food, rotten food being served as fresh, plastic bags that instantly tear, a couch that has completely collapsed after 4 months of use, plastic hooks with weak adhesive, an unusually dull "new" knife, plastic water bottles illegally "recycled" using tap water, mattresses with no cushion and heavy springs, a clothes dryer that breaks after using it once, a freezer that randomly shuts off, clothing that bleeds and shrinks once it's washed, fruit that tastes as though it were picked out of the garbage...

I love this country, which is why I see the strong need for change. Of course this is just one of a host of incredibly immense issues in the mainland. The bottom line is that Chinese people want the cheapest of everything, and with no real enforced safety regulations businesses will take as many dodgy shortcuts as possible to get a product to a ridiculously low price. It's a cycle that creates garbage over and over again.