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Comment by altern8 | Hacker News Reader

I think about this a lot because I try to never buy anything Chinese or low quality unless I have to.

Unfortunately, from my experience artisans aren't willing to do the work anymore, even if you pay them premium. For instance, a carpenter here in Poland that decided to be a carpenter would rather cut up pre-made cabinets to your specs than make them from scratch using wood, even if I pay them 10x.

Then, people aren't willing to pay premium for stuff. For some reason, they would rather buy 20 products that last year than 1 product that can last 20 or more.

It's a problem for me because I value quality and would be willing to pay premium, but I just can't ever find anything.

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There's lots of high quality Chinese stuff, too. Why do you say it as if quality and Chinese don't go together?

It's an old stereotype - between 1990 and 2010 or so, Chinese manufacturing was usually seen as of a lower quality.

This was often unfair and incorrect even then, but it's clearly mad now. Chinese products run the gamut from the lowest to the highest ends in almost every consumer field. But some people hew to old stereotypes.

50 years ago when I was a kid... Japan and Taiwan were known for making cheap junk. They shook the reputation.

Now I feel old - get off my lawn.

I'm honestly happy for Japan, Taiwan, and China. It's great that they make cool stuff.

I just wish we still did too.

I'm not sure where you live, but it is reasonable to bet that "we" still does.

The US manufactures more than it ever did - but the number of people working to manufacture stuff is way down (while population is way up), and so few people have visibility into what is being made. There is a lot of cool stuff made in the US. Whatever country you live in likely has a similar story.

I remember when "Made in Taiwan" was a punchline. Now you buy a fancy motherboard it says "designed in Taipei, Manufactured in China"

When I go to any store, the Chinese version is ALWAYS lower quality. I've yet to see the opposite.

Where are you going to shop? And how do you know something is the 'Chinese version'? It's not like for example Apple advertises where they assemble their products.

For a concrete example, we get very good rice varieties specifically from certain parts of China. (But here in Singapore people also really care about rice. You generally can't buy good and fresh rice in the middle of the Polish countryside for example.) And, yes, for this product the 'Chinese' variety is superior to eg generic Thai rice.

I put 'Chinese' in scare-quotes, because just like you don't just drink 'French wine' when you know what you are doing, you don't just eat 'Chinese' rice.

For a lot of tea drinking paraphernalia, the most top of the line items also come from China. Even if you are into, say, Japanese tea.

I either look at the label or do research beforehand. I buy from all kind of places.

I wasn't thinking of agricultural products, but rather anything manufactured. As an example, appliances made in Germany will have a cord long enough that you can actually plug into the wall, while the one that's made in China will have a useless 10-centimeter cord that would force me to use an extension.

Your mileage might vary, this is just my experience, but it's been pretty consistent for a few decades, with things going downhill in the past I'd say 5 years or so.

We are happy with our Miele appliances (washing machine, dryer, dish washer.) But we also have plenty of Chinese stuff that works well.

I've recently had kids, and I'm actually impressed at how much toys have improved in quality since I was a kid growing up in Germany. And, yes, most of these new toys come from China etc. By and large, they seem to be sturdier and last a lot longer, and are cheaper, too.

I'm especially impressed by the light-up shoes we bought. I guess you can blame that on general improvements in LEDs and battery technology in that specific case, maybe.

For what it's worth, I now live in Singapore, and we are very open on trade, so as a consumer you benefit from especially brutal competition.

Could also be that if you're in Singapore you get better stuff. It's possible that European companies pick crappy, cheaper products that they have a higher margin on to cover importing and transport. I have no idea.

It might be possible, I don't know. Singapore is a fairly small market, so we don't really get any bespoke stuff.

Transport shouldn't really be worse: once you put anything on a container ship, it doesn't really matter much how long the ride is. But imports could be more annoying in other ways.

We do have a lot more people speaking Chinese here (around 3/4 of the population are ethnically Chinese after all) and lots of personal contacts, so we get a lot of people running small import businesses getting in Chinese stuff.

Of course, there's still plenty of low quality stuff you can buy. But I see that as a benefit: it's good to have the choice available, if you want to take it.

Historically, they're lax on regulation. Hence the association with bad quality.

Regulation doesn't have much to do with quality. For example, there's plenty of regulation to make food safe, but almost nothing about making your food high quality in the sense of taste and texture.

You get quality from competition and customers opening their wallets for quality.

Another example: Apple assembles some nice consumer hardware in China. Their quality doesn't depend on regulation.

The regulations often change the economics of production to favour improved quality/attempting to sell upmarket.

Have you ever tried Starbucks coffee? I'm sure they are complying with all relevant regulations.

And also have the proverb, “If you can cheat, then cheat”. I guess it's just part of their culture.

We do that too, it just isn't a proverb.

Spoiler alert, almost everything is made in China, including the premium stuff.

I definitely have to do a lot of work every time I need something, but I can often find products that aren't made in China (normally Germany).

If not, I usually just don't buy it new and just go to the thrift store. I can usually find what I need, made 30 years ago that will probably last me for the rest of my life.

> Unfortunately, from my experience artisans aren't willing to do the work anymore, even if you pay them premium.

"premium" ? No they've had to lower their prices because otherwise you would never even look at them in the first place (or they don't get a livable amount of work, even if you personally do pay like you say).

And the drop in prices has to come from somewhere. Quality is by far the easiest thing to skimp on.

Its not the 90s anymore. China can make stuff, and they make most of your stuff.

Curious where your entirely 100% not-made-in-china computer and/or smartphone come from. Taiwan perhaps?

Not sure, it's a Google Pixel. But a smartphone would probably fall into the "unless I have to" category.

What's your point?

Wow defensive much? I was just curious to see if you’d found a non-Chinese phone and/or computer anywhere. Chill out man.

I don't think we read the same reply you did.

No idea what you're talking about, I just replied to your message normally

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