World’s top bicycle maker is moving U.S. orders to Taiwan factory
I don't immediately discard an item because it's made in China, as I know of some high quality items made there. Most Apple products, some Xiaomi products or Meermin/Feit shoes.<p>However, I tend to be very skeptical about its quality. Moving manufacturing to China is most often done to reduce cost. The only industry where it's not done due to cost, but supply chain issues, is electronics.<p>And with cost reduction comes lower quality. Higher tolerances, zero pollution standards, etc. In particular, most items I got from China have this terrible new plastic smell that is almost intoxicating. Same for some clothing dyes. Studies show formaldehyde concentrations are really high in Chinese homes, and I'm not surprised.<p>Hence, a few years ago I made a resolution to raise my standards and avoid those things. But it's a lot of trouble to find high quality items these days. I want to own few things and keep most for the rest of my life. I have slowly curated such a list, but it's as I said you need to go out of your way and often get custom things from niche brands.<p>Once a big company in a particular industry moves to China, most will follow shortly. It's game theory. The average customer couldn't care less about things I mentioned above. Sadly, it's all about price.<p>tl;dr As a consumer I miss much better reviews and reports on product quality, safety and repairability. I feel that'd improve the situation where most industries localize to China to cut costs at the expense of everything else due to information asymmetry.