I always think it is amusing that some people make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese can only make cheap crap(forgetting all their cell phones and apple laptops come from there).

The American market only wants to buy cheap crap so that is what is made and sent. Usually though the skills involved in making something cut-rate are just as applicable to making something top notch.

American manufacturing skills have atrophied as it has moved to a service economy while as you say the Chinese have been boosting manufacturing for 30 years.

It's very common to have multiple chinese brands competing against each other, throwing out better products every year... with western companies maybe having one or two products.

See something like Roomba vs. Xiaomi/Roborock/Deebot/Ecovacs/etc.

This is a real example how western IP stagnates western economy and it's making it not competitive - the IP law makes it easy for incumbents to kill of iteration and competition.

It shouldn't be a surprise to people that quality isn't there if you buy a nameless thing at the cheapest possible price, regardless of where it's made.

On the other hand, China has major brands in many markets. DJI drones, Anker chargers and cords, Lenovo computers, Polestar cars. TCL TVs and Haier appliances (which I believe also owns the GE consumer brand) are also very common. Roborock vacuums seem to be considered a better value than Roomba now.

It's an interesting counterpoint to the old cliche about paying for brands. Clearly buying on price alone is foolish, as is not considering the reputation of the maker of a product.

It's the exact same thing that happened with Japanese cars. Believe it or not, Japanese autos used to be considered cheap junk in the 70s and early 80s.

I've recently been putting together a large aquarium build for the first time in ~15 years, and it's really shocking how good and how cheap the Chinese stuff is now. Of particular note is lighting, where the price/W on non-Chinese equipment is 4-10x the Chinese equivalent.