China is now making really nice optics, but they customer service.are still behind the Western world in terms of quality control, whether by intent or circumstance. I firmly believe that as a country, they are more concerned with producing low cost items rather than ultimate high quality items.....
I deal with Chinese products on a regular basis for industrial vehicles. QC is a constant problem, even when the parent company is European or American. We have seen repeatedly where Chinese vendors will supply HVPT (High Volume Production Tooling) parts that meet our spec, but as time goes on the quality starts to drift. Its always a game with them and requires constant inspection. They are capable of high quality products, but there is a cost....
I'm in China every now and then with my job and my perceptions of the Chinese are similar.
They're capable of making just about anything you want. The problem is that after a while they'll start slipping sub-standard parts and cutting other corners on production hoping to save a little here and there to increase their profit margins, betting that the customer won't figure it out. You've got to stay on top of them with inspections or they'll do it and product quality will suffer. They'll also make knock offs of your product and sell it on the black market. One thing I've seen is with Callaway golf clubs. When callaway changed the design of their golf club heads the factory that was making them kept producing them from the old molds and selling them out the back door. They had the callaway name on them and were made in the same factory, but they never touched the callaway distribution channel and callaway got none of the profits. They were essentially indistinguishable from a real one since they were the same thing. Part of me says that the companies that this happens to deserve it because they should have known what they were getting into dealing with the Chinese. Patent/copyright rights mean less than nothing to the Chinese, they just don't care about that. Any intellectual property they can steal and copy they will. The Chinese aren't the Japanese, they've got a completely different set of business ethics. If a Japanese gets caught cheating you he'll go in the back and run a knife through his belly for dishonoring his family, the Chinese will just high five each other. Totally different cultures.
