The idea that quantity strictly beats quality is not uncontroversial, however. There is plenty of evidence of people doing great work (usually also coming from a small-ish set of "superstar" labs), and still doing just fine. See, for instance, this list: http://www.thespectroscope.com/read/its-not-publish-or-peris...

I think the fact that all the paper mill instances cited in the OP are from Chinese groups suggests that this is a problem driven by a few broken systems (primarily in the developing world), and not the modern scientific enterprise as a whole.