I should probably just stay out of this as the China thing gets chased around the fire here every time the inexpensive optics subject comes up. Don't mistake me, I don't like it (Made in China)any more than anybody else. Farmboy1 said a simple truth. In today's optics, almost anything $500 or less is at high probability (or near certainty) of being Chinese. I will add another one. Just because the label says "Made in Japan" does not mean much, if anything. John Barsness had a post the other day somewhere here when this subject was on the front burner that said sort of the same thing, but he added the observation that some companies even lie about the origin. Pay attention, he knows what he is talking about. Just because the label of the Olympus Magellan says "Made in Japan" does not mean much. It may be the truth. It may not be. For the price, I for one would be more surprised than not to find it really was "Made in Japan". I really don't know, but you need more information than the label on the binocular and the name of a Japanese company as proof. I have some idea of some stuff that people think is Japanese that is not. I can't prove that, so that's all I'll say. Fact is that ALL of the Japanese optics companies have major presence in China, most owning their own facilities there. Nikon and the entire Monarch line is a prime example. Monarchs are Chinese made. There is even a large German company with a very large optical facility in China as well.
It would maybe be a good deal to know what is really made where and how much of what is made where. However, you have to be more closely related to Sherlock Holmes than I am to figure that convoluted business out. I tend to evaluate the optic and in my opinion, folks here are smart enough to figure out for themselves what they want to do with Chinese manufacture. I sort of think bitching about Chinese optics is like taking aspirin for a headache and doing nothing about why you have the headache in the first place. Made in China is not the problem. The problem is WHY it is made in China.
The argument is also sort of lost out of the gate when the main argument comes down to "cheap Chicom crap". Sure a lot of it is, just look at Barska, BSA, et. al. But anybody who has looked a a $130 Zen Ray Vista knows he is not looking at crap, at least form an object quality point. From a political and cultural perspective, yes, but keep the argument there, because the root of the problem is political.
For what it is worth, all of what you said is quite redundant. What it amounts to is a big conspiracy on the part of all optics companies to label some of their optics as made in Japan and others made in China, which ever they think would do the best from the labeling based on their performance. I have dealt with optics in form or another for quite sometime and am fully aware of all you have stated. I evaluate every optic I look at regardless of country of origin, but in the end do not prefer to purchase Chicom products. There is a standard and reputable companies like Olympus and Nikon are not going to risk their reputations and money by intentionally mislabeling their products country of origin with respect to where they were manufactured. I have owned other Olympus binos where they stated they were made in China as well as several digital SLRs. In cased you missed it, I also posted a website where objective testing was performed so that the original poster and others can view and compare the performance of the Olympus and Minox with other binoculars. While I am confident that the Zen Ray product is good based on the recommendations and reviews, while I have never looked through any, I always like to have objective data to look at when recommending products to others in order to validate my recommendation and the fact that it is not only "good to my eyes." Chicom products are well known to suffer from poor quality control issues regardless of the price of the item. And while all Japanese optics manufactures have ties in China, so do all American optics companies, power equipment makers and so on. That does not mean we have to buy their Chicom made products. I try to buy Taiwanese made power and bench tools. So it is up to each individual to buy Chicom optics and I will say crap if they wish and support a country that wants to take us over economically.
