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If you buy a Sony product made in Thailand, what protects you from encountering crap like in the article is not that it's made in Thailand instead of China, but that Sony has a reputation to protect and the expertise to do proper quality control.

If you buy stuff directly from a Thai company that you never heard of before just because their product was the cheapest, you'll have to do your own testing and will likely discover some sharp edges.

A lot of Chinese company owners have moved production to Vietnam, Thailand. Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc., specifically because they are aware of this changing preference in the West. Chinese owned business is not China-based business, but most Chinese-owned businesses are subject to CCP influences.

As you pointed out: manufacturing standards vary factory to factory and region to region, and quality issues abound in newer manufacturing regions that lack the crazy competitive environment China has (a thousand pots et al).

Counterfeit PPE really revealed a lot about boys these factories operate. Very hard to verify ownership reliably.

There's another, more capitalist reason: wages in most of those countries are lower than wages in China. It's not because of "changing preference".

That’s definitely part of it.

But for context I’m basing part of that opinion on conversations I had with factory owners I’ve done business with in some of those countries running import/export. Many Chinese manufacturers see the conflict between the US and China as bad for business and have optioned third party countries to continue doing business no matter what happens. They’re very smart people.

> but that Sony has a reputation to protect and the expertise to do proper quality control.

They don't, though. Sony, like many other companies, makes products for developing nations which are not sold in more affluent Western countries. ("World" products)

Trying to buy replacement Bluetooth earphones in India really opened my eyes on this one. The store I was buying from had a strict NO RETURNS policy, but still bent the rule when the headphones weren't iPhone compatible (scratchy distortion). After opening two more pairs of Sony with the same problem, they decided to stop and just gave my money back.

This wasn't a budget model - it's a model which you'll never see in the US or EU. Their products aren't just differentiated by country of manufacture, but by the intended market. Depending on brand name isn't enough.

Why are you being downvoted? Avoiding chinese products is a good thing. Thanks for the tips.

Is there a reliable way to research non-Chinese manufactured products? I know to just look for the “made in” somewhere on the page or product, but it’s not as simple as including a search tag in a field, either.

I've noticed lately that in the Q&A section of the majority of the items I look at on Amazon, someone asks where the item was made.

That's helpful. I've always wanted to know where my stuff comes from, from my food to my gadgets. So I encourage other people do ask the same questions on Amazon. It helps other people.

This might be something to check out:

ImportYeti

https://www.importyeti.com/

Sadly Amazon doesn't respect the NOT operator anymore:

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/20069/is-there-a...

This browser addon claims to show the origin country of any item: https://www.wecultivate.us/

I haven't tried it much though (I'm not in the USA).

> Sony makes their phones in Thailand, speakers/headsets in Malaysia. Panasonic produces a lot of consumer electronics in Malaysia. Samsung makes some of their phones in Vietnam, and the high-end ones in Korea. Their fridges are also made in Thailand/Korea. Google makes their Nest line of products in Thailand/Vietnam now. Some Netgear Arlo products are made in Indonesia, (some?) Netgear switches are made in Thailand.

Made/Manufactured/Assembled in X country doesn't mean not using Made/Manufactured/Assembled parts from Y country in the process. Take the Cisco router manufactured in Thailand. Out of the thousands of individual components on the circuit boards, not a single IC within it was manufactured in China?

"Made in USA" has fairly strict rules. You can sneak some components in but it needs to be negligible and not misleading.

> If you spend just a small bit of effort, you can look for items not made in China. They are usually higher quality.

I try to do this when I can, and they're definitely higher quality, but for some products, finding a version not made in China is almost impossible, a problem that's exacerbated by stores like Amazon not being required to disclose where their products are made.