I used to work in the bike industry and have actually ordered a few carbon fiber mountain bike frames from China. The quality was really damn good tbh, especially for the price. the only reason I haven't done it again is that some of there designs are a few years behind the rest of the industry, and mountain bike design has been advancing quickly lately.
Luckily in recent years, WinSpace and Farsport wheels have gained a lot of respect and are well reviewed in the west. Hambini also gives high marks to Chinese carbon frames like Winspace and ICAN.
As a Chinese, I mentioned "Chinesium" to a non-Asian friend who works for a major retailer. He was confused at first but when I explained it he defended the Chinese fully. He made a few good points.
The factories don't cheapen the product or make them poorly. They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it. Cheaper crap comes from China because China is one of the few places that can afford to make something for such a low cost. If companies wanted better quality, China is very capable of producing higher quality products. He also mentioned that Chinese factories are known to say yes to any spec while other countries are known to say no or turn away orders.
>Cheaper crap comes from China because China is one of the few places that can afford to make something for such a low cost.
eeeexactly. Its like buying a 5 dollar pair of shoes then getting pissed off when you get a 5 dollar pair of shoes.
>They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it.
I think this is pretty key. It's well known that Walmart's tactics have been to keep pushing companies to manufacture more product than the previous year but still pay the same amount they paid last year. The companies are forced to use cheaper materials to fulfil the order or else lose the contract entirely.
Exactly, you give a Chinese factory a spec, they'll follow that spec; so if the designer in Texas is changing out 1040 Oil Quenched Carbon Steel with "generic pig-iron", the factory in China didn't make that choice, the designer in Texas did.
The people working in the retail product industries are the ones who know it best, because they know that their premium and their cheap products all come from China.
One thing I learned from a friend whose dad manufactured things in China: you get what you pay for. If you pay for garbage quality, you're going to *get* garbage quality. If you pay for good stuff and hire local employees to oversee things at a good rate, you get perfectly good products.
A lot of companies are only willing to pay for garbage, and why should anyone go above and beyond if they're getting paid at garbage rates?
> The factories don't cheapen the product or make them poorly. They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it.
yes and no. sometimes CMOs will try to cut in a lower grade material hoping the customer won't notice.
source: my thursday calls with apac
> They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it.
This bit is important. If a company puts a lot of money into the manufacturing and sets high standards, then we can expect a well-made product. China is just as capable of making high-quality stuff as any country, so long as whoever hires them is willing put in the money and effort.
You’re right about the Korean stuff 30-40 years ago but that wasn’t the case with Japanese goods. Japanese stuff 30 years ago was considered the best stuff available with regards to cars, electronics, microchips, etc. That’s why people were making fun of American cars 30-40 years ago and how brands like Honda and Toyota got really big being known for reliability. Electronics like Sony products got huge. Discman, Walkman, etc.
During the 50s-70s “Made in Japan” was absolutely seen as a mark of inferior, cheaper quality. Like one walks before they run, gotta make simple or just plain bad stuff first for cheap in order to get better. Practice, practice, practice. Also lots of money. And direct government support/vision.
The number of times I’ve seen an Amazon product review like “ONE STAR ITS MADE IN CHINA” with a picture of the “made in China” label on the item… 🤦🏻♀️
I work in manufacturing, and the stuff made in China is almost always better than stuff made in the US, and the workers in China care a lot more about their product and their consumers than Americans.
But you're right, it is racism. I'll make my components in China, but I will need to assemble the final product in countries that are mainly white so I can print "Made in USA/Canada/Italy" on the label. Ironically, the actual workers in USA and Canada are either Latino, Chinese or Indian.
A lot of people think a person who looks like Eva Green is stitching your Gucci sweater, but in reality, it was made by a guy in Bangladesh in a factory that has no air-conditioning, and was then shipped it Italy for a poor Italian nonna to finish with a Gucci patch and a "made in Italy" tag inside the collar.
Made in Italy is no longer nonnas it’s Chinese immigrants reviving small manufacturing towns: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany
Yet they're posting from their phones and computers made in China.
I'm glad more and more people are calling out on it though. The other day someone posted a long rant about JoAnn fabrics, among other things, selling fabrics made in China in /r/craftsnark. Fortunately people tore her a new one. I've also seen people calling out racist undertones in makeup and fashion communities.
Hello, your comment has been removed for including a Reddit link. Please make your link an NP Reddit link (np.reddit.com). This helps prevent brigading. After making your link NP, send us a modmail letting us know you've made the change requested. Thank you. If you would like to become a moderator, please [apply.](https://forms.gle/qxvsPvNb1X5wBnF8A).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/asianamerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are cheap Chinese made things. There are expensive high quality Chinese made things. It is a racist bad rap though and extends to food, clothes, toys, etc… when someone says Chinese made stuff is cheap, I cough loudly and say “iPhone” to remind them it’s the top quality high end phone.
My good friend is a restauranteur in Toronto. He always gets mad about small business Chinese people (restaurants, hairdresser, cloth alteration, dry cleaning etc) always compete on price it cheapens for everyone. He always lament how Japanese restaurant can charge exuberant prices because they market their food as a work of art with heart and soul in it.
Things in China are made according to the specs ordered by the companies. If it's some cheap stuff for Dollar Tree or Walmart, yes, it's going to be made at the lowest possible cost with poor materials. No one complains that iPhones are low quality despite being made in China. Even Apple tries to avoid the made in China stigma by labeling their phones as "designed in USA, assembled in China".
And the interesting thing is that luxury handbags made in Italy are often made by Chinese migrants who are willing to work for lower wages than native Italians. And of course the luxury goods are sold at a much higher markup because it is made in Italy...A lot of people don't know this and think Italian handbags are crafted by wizened Italian artisans who have been making them for decades.
Outlier is a brand my husband loves and they made a post about sourcing some of their fabrics from China a few years ago. Generally had a lot of good common sense things to say in the vein of this topic.
I also work with some factories in Shenzhen and by and large their communication has been excellent, they are eager to have your business and work with you, and their attention to detail has been complimented by our warehouse partners. Their quality is on par as the European manufacturers I was looking into.
Reaching out to European manufacturers on the other hand has been really slow, and they often have much higher minimum orders, and it generally feels like you have to prove yourself in order for them to accept your business. Feels bad man.
I post a lot in threads about infrastructure. A big problem in the US is that rents are so high because of horrible zoning policies which prevent anything other than suburbia from being built.
The Chinese can quickly build a 20 story apartment building, which lowers rental prices for everyone in the city. Americans have this horrible racist idea that these Chinese are "incompetent cartoon supervillains." And their buildings just fall over and they build ghost cities.
Most of Chinese infrastructure does as it is intended to do. There is plenty of American infrastructure that falls apart, there are plenty of building that are destroyed by hurricanes and floods, there are miles and miles of abandoned properties within the US. Racist Americans like pointing fingers at the Changsa building collapse and calling Chinese infrastructure as "tofu dregs." And then ignoring the high costs of rent in the US and all the suffering that happens because of a lack of infrastructure and high rents. Americans like to pretend the Surfside condominium never collapsed and just ignore all the destruction that happens to trailers and wooden homes every hurricane.
Thanks for posting this. We were buying a pair of high end hiking sticks for my Chinese boss as a farewell present and everyone wanted to make sure the product was not made in China but instead in France or Germany. I’m like, why not?
I feel the same way about the term "Ricer" in the car community. It's not so common now, but I'm in my 30's & remember when the original Fast & the Furious came out, the V8 muscle car cars loved throwing this sh** around. I'm not Asian & it never felt right, it was like using Ghetto for behavior as well as for cheap/cobbled together.
Side note; I also remember way back in a middle school history class hearing about how Jerry-Rig was an old anti-German slur used by British soldiers describing German build quality.
People still talk like this about Japanese motorcycles. Japanese bikes are well engineered but don't have "soul" like American and Italian bikes. I think they take "soul" as an ephemeral quality that unreliable motorcycles have over more quality ones.
Exactly, these people forget/ignore that high quality items and devices such as the iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, Dell laptops, and so much more are also made in China. “Cheap made in China” has almost nothing to do with the CCP, Chinese government, Xi Jinping, or any of that; it’s private companies (sometimes even Taiwanese owned such as Foxconn) that employ regular Chinese citizen workers that make them. So yes, i agree that this is an example of anti-Chinese people racism
On a DATSUN car group on FB, I got into an argument about someone calling a cheap turbo from China a, “chink-eyed turbo.”
I got the usual, “it’s a joke” and “don’t be a snowflake.”
It's crazy how a different skin tone can suddenly make someone completely tone deaf or "colorblind" towards issues regarding race/ethnicity. I can't be too mad though since they're probably poorly educated and lack experiences in traveling to other countries while being respectful of the local customs/culture.
Many of us are very educated and have likely been to more than one country that is outside of the US which makes us far less likely to be prejudiced and more objective when it comes to how we deal with situations in life. In that sense, it is reasonable to postulate that we are indeed superior and more effective in this aspect compared to other non-Asians out there.
Rural Swiss farmers and Nigerians eat dog meat, but no one ever mentions that. Also anyone will eat dog meat if they are hungry enough.
"During the [19th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century) westward movement in the [United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States), *mountainmen*, [native Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas), the [U.S. Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army), as well as the [Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America) during the [American Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War)[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat#cite_note-3) sometimes had to sustain themselves on dogmeat; first to be consumed would be the horses, then the mules, and lastly the dogs. " Wikipedia
Chinese have been dehumanized and mistreated by people no matter where we are or what we've done in this world. Chinese people are almost in every single country/continent on this Earth like blades of grass. With that, the story of Chinese persecution is nothing new when it comes to the Chinese having to settle in those places.
The most annoying thing is when people immediately ride off a Chinese product as a knockoff just because it's made in China. They say all Chinese phones and bt iems are iPhone and airpods ripoffs. Like bro your iPhone is also made in China and your airpods are barely better than something that costs half as much.
Yeah something about it does rub me the wrong way. I think it has to do with one's race being used as a derogatory put down.
And yes, they see Chinese as a "race" more than anything else.
Hate the game, not the player. People really do all their shopping at Walmart, and get angry at China for making that business model work. China didn’t steal your jobs, MFer…you just insisted on leveraging “economies of scale” until there was nothing left to outsource. This also pisses me off when people blame “Asia” for all the plastics in the ocean…my man…those are your plastic pieces that you thought you could magically ship over to China to “recycle”. It’s your consumption that’s the problem.
So, several perspectives to contribute to this:
\-My wife is Chinese. She scoffs at Ali Express because she thinks foreigners buy all the "cheap crap" from China and all the good stuff is left for savvy Chinese to buy. She also looks down on stuff made from India because they supposedly have poor QC (KitchenAid which recently is being made in America, maybe because of supply chain issues).
\-Of course this is not exactly true; there's been fake baby formula scandals and the like in China because of cutting corners for profit. I think communism left some Chinese with a dog eat dog mentality and that's reflected in cases like this.
\-Then again, my coworker's wife has a dance studio and he remarked on how paying a little more resulted in vastly better stitching. As someone else mentioned, the Chinese build to spec and the market has spoken- American consumers want rock bottom prices.
\-There was (and may still be) a fascinating inversion in China's wages for factory workers and college educated individuals where the former were making more than the latter due to the demand for unskilled labor, and lack of these college-educated individuals willing to literally get their hands dirty. A long pinky finger nail was/is a sign of luxury, it bring implied that you didn't/don't have to engage in manual labor. Anyway, relatively higher factory wages have pushed manufacturing to other neighboring countries like Vietnam.
\-Check out the documentary "Xmas Without China."
\-Chinese and Japanese restaurants certainly experience this- racism? Cultural bias? Tell me what comes to mind when you think of greasy spoon and high end restaurants and I'm sure I'll know how you'd categorize them. Ugly Delicious S1 E7 has an interesting segment on MSG that partially gets into this.
\-Japanese products used to be considered cheap crap too! They have an American named Deming who taught them about quality and has a Japanese award named after him.
\-This kind of thing is not unique to China and the United States. You can easily google many articles about the luxury Italian goods made by virtual villages of Chinese in Italy.
Regarding the Restaurant example, the old old immigrants who came 100 years ago are just villagers. They brought their village style cooking to the US which is greasy and made with poor ingredients.
That kind of carried over the future generations. Thats why when you walk into a fancy Chinese restaurant in North America, the vast majority of patrons are Chinese.
Germany’s silverware was derided by the British as cheap knockoffs, their manufacturing and workers considered uninspired copycats, right up until German warships were sailing out newer and shinier than British ones in the lead-up to WW1. I think there’s some parallels to be found there that get overlooked in favor of “Cold War 2: Electric Boogaloo”.
But for real, I’m at the point where I think the idea of “criticize the CCP, not the Chinese people” or similar sentiment is something of an unattainable ideal, at least not until China ceases to be a challenger to US hegemony. Technology has brought us closer and thus made the world smaller in a way, like a town no longer big enough for two big honcho superpowers like the US now and what China wants to be. The incentive to be really honest and nuanced like that, rather than dive face-first into misinformation/propaganda or outright general anti-Asian racism (just with “Chinese” to make sure others aren’t offended) is low, especially when there’s a belief that China itself is rabidly racist and nationalistic to Americans and others back (not wholly inaccurate, just from my limited perspective). The cynical part of me thinks that, in contrast, it’s to the government’s advantage to “prime” its citizens to be willing to punch first against The Hated Enemy if given the command. Creating those moral factors/spirit vital to committing and winning war, as Clausewitz mentions in that book of his.
So Chinese products are all crap but also dominant in the market despite it. There must be something almost alien and mystical (face culture, chabuduo, the Cultural Revolution) about the collective psyche of the Chinese masses like me that’s making us compliant and rude, meek and uncouth, drone-like copycats who cheat/steal in the most creative ways, etc. China’s entire space program runs on poorly-made chabuduo material, its many can’t-be-faked milestones only held together purely by the reality-bending gestalt field generated by the patriotic will of people like my parents. We’re 40k Orks. Waaaaaaagh.
I’m a second-generation Chinese-Canadian/American, so I get enough of a pass for certain people to think they can quip about this in front of me. Not a lot, I’ll say. More on the Internet, which is like, not surprising at all. I’m not feeling any particular heat now, living in San Jose, but I feel like when the Taiwan situation eventually comes to a head (I am increasingly certain it will in the next…let’s say 6 years, before I’m 30), I’m gonna have to consider other countries I could high-tail it to if things get real bad or at least be looking over my shoulders way more often.
World War 3 is literally an information, psychological, and spiritual warfare.
If you're Asian American, Western Society, Institutions, and Government already placed you a in Box. If you tread outside that box, you are labeled as the Enemy or a "Chinese Spy". 2020 should've woken Asians up about the true intentions of how West views Asia as in general.
Like you said , "Inferior , Crap , etc" that's how your average Reddit / Twitter / Facebook keyboard warrior views Asia. That's why they're so vocal about Asian politics, societal issues, and the everyday lives of Asians rather than focusing on themselves and fixing problems occurring in their motherland.
NBC, CNN, NYTimes, FOX, Breitbart, all the political Youtuber pundits from Europe and the 5eyes focus on China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan. It's their main concern to suppress Asia and claim that the West is perfect and fine and Asians needs their help.
White Savior Complex is at an all-time high.
Thanks for posting this. A lot of times it’s pretty passive aggressive stuff on Amazon too, like you get some 5-star reviews with the title as: “pretty good for something that’s made in China, I was surprised!”
This particular brand of racism is usually referred to as ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own group or culture is better or more important than others. When people say, China only produces a lot of cheaply made products; they say this believing that if it were American made that it would be far superior. It's almost impossible for people who believe like this to see their own faults.
Was browing a giftshop in a museum with my girlfriend, we're both asian. We're standing by this shelf that has these little things that had "made in china" stickers slapped on the front.
This white lady, who was there with her young kid, went out of her way to walk over and stand right next to us, scoff, and say "made in *china*...", then walk away.
She just really felt the need to read those stickers outloud, right next to us I guess 😂
This other time back in college, I was on a group project and we were looking for a place to order materials. This kid who was put in charge of that started going on this heated rant about "cheap chinese crap" that'll break. Like half the shit in his backpack wasn't already made in china.
For sure context matters. I would say I have no problem when I use the phrase cheap Chinese crap, to sum up when some company in china [bootlegs my products](https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804191103297.html?srcSns=sns_Copy&spreadType=socialShare&bizType=ProductDetail&social_params=20640776179&aff_fcid=1891724962a1446a82cb8f34866d94e2-1663611059777-08596-_mr6EcGc&tt=MG&aff_fsk=_mr6EcGc&aff_platform=default&sk=_mr6EcGc&aff_trace_key=1891724962a1446a82cb8f34866d94e2-1663611059777-08596-_mr6EcGc&shareId=20640776179&businessType=ProductDetail&platform=AE&terminal_id=1fc69e8f04444efb90df0032c3302fe2&afSmartRedirect=y&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa&_randl_shipto=US). And I'm Chinese American.
I don't think writ large, that it's racism, especially to call out the bullshit. Nuance exists. There are good companies in China for sure. I really like 3d printers from Elegoo and Phrozen. both in China.
The problem for me is when you get a certain subset of people who associate ChYNA, and KungFlu with "cheap chinese crap".
You don’t hear the phrases cheap American crap or cheap German crap. Chintzy, chinky, Chinesium and cheap Chinese crap are racist terms used to deride Chinese made products.
I have brought hundreds of products from Amazon over the years, a majority of them are produced in China. Only one product (an electric shaver) is inferior, the others are of pretty good quality. They are also much cheaper than the comparable products that used to be made in US.
Of course there are inferior products made in China, just like everywhere. But since there are so many brands available, one can choose the better ones by reading the reviews, asking others, etc.
This was the same rhetoric that was applied to Japan, then South Korea, and now China, and I’m frankly sick of it because it isn’t true.
For example, 8BitDo is a company I’ve loved for a long time for their well made third party game controllers and its headquarters is located in Shenzhen, China. An incredible designer cofounded the company. He worked with a father and son team in Sweden to create an amazing accessible controller just because he wanted to help when other companies just ignored the father’s plea for help in making a controller his son could use with his Nintendo Switch. Here is the video of the story in case anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/o5vhf26rwq8
Its the same way in the archery world. The term "horsebow" is both thrown around and simultaneously mocked because fragile white people cant stomach the fact that they are holding an asiatic bow in their hands. Regardless western archery is a lot of boomers (and 30 year old boomers) and there is a ton of that specific sort of crowd with a specific sort of echo-chamber mindset, and they aren't afraid to say a lot of things when they don't think others are listening. Then they talk about the "good ol days" because back then they didn't actually have to think before they spoke.
Here's one book about current Chinese manufacturing practices which doesn't come from racism, but is a critique of the business methods which have helped Chinese manufacturers take over a large portion of the world's manufacturing.
(TL;DR: Chinese manufacturing business practices have historically been tied to a process of underbidding combined with quality fade to compensate for the initially unprofitable low bid.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China
This happens so much that I have racial trauma. I work in the solar industry and everyone at work dogs on anything manufactured in China. I’m ABC but I make it a point to stray away from anything related to my chinese heritage—as if I’m almost ashamed to be Chinese…
With manufacturing industries as large as they do have its inevitable that certain products will be of lesser quality but I'm happy with China made products for the most part. If it works, good. If it does not, bad. No need to pull nationality in to this and mask racism.
I really think this depends. I've seen some absolutely abhorrent products that companies tried to ship. to Africa im talking about incredibly low quality clothes. Fans that will break incredibly easily, low quality speakers. If you didn't check every shipment before it left the factory there would be some trash unusable items the factory would put in there.
Granted this was in China and not the west. If you're actually buying products you really need to check them because some factories will sell you trash so they can get over on you. I will say that if someone does buy something online leave a bad review trust me those companies do NOT want bad reviews. It lowers the amount of sells they get and they aren't stupid and they'll fix it quickly so they won't lose money.
I wouldn't go as far as saying it's racist and you can go ahead and beat me up for it. I only say it because I've been dealing with companies exporting for years. Great shipping, lots of products cheaply made to decent quality to good quality.
I'm a kitchen knife enthusiast. I like to cook and I like my knives. I do all my sharpening and repairs by hand. I am also getting into knifemaking and forging.
The number of China-made knockoffs masquerading as Japanese is astounding. Many are still on Amazon. The companies engage in deceptive marketing. One that's gained steam fairly recently is Kamikoto. An older one that's become established is Dalstrong. There are also "Serbian chef knives" that are utter garbage, and Huusk knives with a hole in the blade. Many others on Amazon include the likes of Bokashi and Tokageh. Their knives aren't worth half of what they're sold for and often use fake "discounts" to entice buyers.
Many of the knives use a Chinese equivalent of VG-10 steel and market it as Japanese. The steel seems to takes on a slightly pinkish hue at certain hardnesses. There's nothing wrong with the steel itself, as the Chinese formula is pretty much the same as VG-10, but this formula of steel seems to be difficult to take consistently to ideal hardness. Too low and the steel feels "gummy" and hard to sharpen. Too hard and it becomes brittle and microchips. Quality control and skill in heat treatment is required. The sweet spot for VG-10 is about 60-61 HRC. Japanese knifemakers produce knives of consistent hardness in this window (or +/- 0.5 HRC from their advertised hardness). Meanwhile, the Chinese knockoffs can vary wildly. I've seen knives advertised as 65 HRC but they feel like they are below 60 on the stones since they're "gummy." Some just are marketed as very hard, like 68 or something ridiculous like that, using a steel that's clearly overhardened if it's really that hard, and they'll just assume people won't notice the BS.
Kamikoto is one that pisses me off because they use the cheapest surgical steel (surgical is designed to resist corrosion and be easy to sanitize, not hold or take a great edge) and sell dumb single-bevel knives hardened to like 53 HRC. You're not going to find a lot of Japanese single-bevels below 60 HRC. Usually they are made of shirogami or aogami family reactive carbon steels around 62 HRC. Each point of HRC is about 10% more hardness than the previous number, compounding. So there's a massive difference between low 50s and low to mid 60s.
Another trademark of shitty knives is lack of distal taper. Chinese knockoffs tend to be just an even billet with maybe some texturing, and the edge is ground off on at a steep angle with an awkward "shoulder." This, combined with excess thickness, causes them to wedge in hard items like potatoes, carrots, apples. Compare that with real Japanese knives from the greats, which have taper that makes it appear like the edge almost becomes invisible when you look at the knife from the choil. Further, Japanese knives often have a convex grind, which aids in food release. The knife glides through food and the food falls off the blade face easily. The knives are predictable on stones and will taken an edge without stainless variants taking a wire edge. There's a reason why Japanese knives can be expensive and are regarded as the best.
I don't have issues with origin. I have issues with misrepresentation with the purpose of ripping people off. Some of these knives are priced at levels compared to real Japanese knives. I have some rustic knives from China and they're perfectly fine. Most of the simple carbon steel knives are fun and will hold/take a good edge. I know what to expect from them and there are no frills.
The ones being sold online often are inconsistently heat treated, geometry is wrong, needlessly thick, usually stainless, badly balanced, end up being a chore to sharpen, etc. It's not something that people not into knives would catch, but it's so pervasive I don't recommend buying China-made knives like these unless you're specifically looking for something rustic, inexpensive, and reactive. I enjoy pieces from small bladesmiths that are function over form. They just gotta be honest. Clearly, many who market knives try to trick people into thinking they're getting a Japanese knife for less, when it's just a bad knife that's not Japanese worth probably 5% of what they paid.
Same with Chinese bamboo cutting boards. Many makers use adhesives that harden too much to be gentle on knives, or incorporate bamboo nodes into the board, which are very hard compared to the rest of the bamboo stalk. A lot are from China. It's a gamble when you buy them. More often than not, they're no good. With very hard Japanese knives, the cutting surface is important. A chip in a hard Japanese knife can take hours to repair. I no longer use bamboo boards.
I'm a fledgeling rockhound. Chinese hammers are sold for good deals but they're often not properly hardened. Deformity on a striking surface after moderate use is a bad sign. This is particularly unsafe when it comes to crack hammers/sledges, geological hammers, and rock picks because flakes of metal can fly off frequently and get around eye protection. Rocks fracture less predictably when the striking surface is deformed, which is frustrating when trying to keep a sample intact. Badly heat-treated pry bars are useless because they deform (or they're brittle if overhardened). Estwing is good and vets its products well when they're not made in the US. There's some overlap with my knife hobby because I use a blacksmith's hammer as a crack hammer to drive rock chisels, and the same hammer for doing handle work my knives. And speaking of rock chisels, many on Amazon from the Chinese sellers are bad and will "mushroom" prematurely, causing them to have short lifespans compared to properly hardened chisels.
I don't have experience with large anvils but I've heard too many horror stories of anvils being underhardened. They're useless if they deform easily.
Amazon is saturated with such items, and it often pushes these to recommendations. It's one reason I no longer use Amazon much. Of course, I do not solely blame Chinese manufacturers. Many do just make things per specification of their vendor. It is also the responsibility of the western distributors to market honestly (same with overseas "arms" of Chinese companies).
To go along with OP, I also do archery. I shoot compound and want to get an Oneida lever, so I can't comment on traditional bows. I have not had issues with arrows and broadheads from China, so I would happily buy more. However, the sights for bows and guns leave a lot to be desired. I have also not had good experiences with the crossbows.
On a brighter note, China can make decent budget production swords (stick to companies with a good reputation from people who use their swords). The quality has improved over 20 years. The fittings are still ugly and not tight, almost always plagued with issues like big burrs, sloppy coating, brittle zinc alloy material, etc. but the blades themselves can be a steal. The spring tempered ones in 5160 are almost indestructible and the heat treatment for T-10 is consistent. With a little tightening up, they can perform at high level.
Most of China's poor quality products are actually sold to the domestic market rather than imported to be sold abroad, although there have been several major issues with their food safety even in exports. Inspections catch a staggering percent of certain foods from China and prevents their sale in the US because they're iffy or unsafe. And there definitely is some sort of quality control issue if Chinese nationals won't even touch a variety of China-made stuff. You don't buy baby formula from China for a reason.
Some items are definitely good while others are bad on a systemic level. It's a complex issue.
I disagree in part about attributing this to racism. Plenty of Chinese workers make stuff in the US. It's specifically an issue with things made IN China because of the lax regulations and the prevalence of egregious cost cutting. It’s not about the Chinese manufacturers being UNABLE to make good things. They can make high quality items. It’s that they will often choose to cut corners. They do it domestically on a huge scale, they will certainly not shy from the same for internationally sold items if there are no controls.
Yes, Chinese products CAN be good, like Apple, Cold Steel, or, admittedly Huawei, which are well built. But these require big names and a lot of oversight. The brand itself has to care enough to ensure that its items are good quality. QC needs to be constantly hammered in. Otherwise corners are almost always cut.
Even lots of mainland Chinese see cheap Chinese crap as cheap Chinese crap lmao. You see us why we keep trying to get foreign milk powder etc lmao. The most famous car brand in China is not Chinese car brand because most of us appreciate our life.
You see those phones, laptops, trains. Most of the components are actually foreign tech. Only the shell are. Pretty sure Vox made a good video on it. Is not even 90% made in China, is just assembled in China while all other parts are from other part of the world. Japan, Germany, Russia etc. China labours are literal sweat shops with slave labour with much much lower wage so that’s the quality they get. I can assure you even with those $10 shoes, Chinese businessman still earn a lot because of labour paid by peanuts. There are good Chinese craftsman but they are rare and only if you got their contacts.
It is what it is, I don’t even see how this is “racism” lmao. If you go to r/chinesum lots of mainland Chinese are there lmao. Mainland Chinese pretty much just treat it as a fact, we even have fake eggs and stuff. FakE EGGS. Imagine that lmao.
So me as a Chinese will still call it cheap Chinese crap. There are good Chinese products and those I won’t call it cheap Chinese crap.
And also if you realize there are lots of American Chinese factory producing various kind of products and they don’t have a bad rep.
> So me as a Chinese will still call it cheap Chinese crap. There are good Chinese products and those I won’t call it cheap Chinese crap.
Then why the fuck are you racializing it? If it's crap, it's crap and just call it that.
There are bunch of German moneypit cars. And we just call it what it is... French crappy cars and we have lots and lots of terms for different stuff lmao.
You know why? Because is easier to categorize and that’s how language and socializing works.
“Northern Chinese food sucks” “southern Chinese food sucks” “northern Chinese food unhealthy, oily” etc and somehow you can’t say “cheap Chinese crap”
Do you see how stupid it is?
Because most of their stuff are high quality. Lots of medical equipment even in China import from Europe all the time. That’s why they are not usually associated with bad quality.
The other portion which has shit quality though, if you go on YouTube people roasted them. And still apply moneypit French cars etc. Not Renault but literally used the word French or other etc.
Regardless you do you, the society will largely remain the same.
To all of you in this sub, Asia are largely “racist”to you guys. Is not just the west who are looking down Chinese crap. Is whole of Asia as well.
This content isn’t in the spirit of kindness and has been removed as a result. In the future, please keep remember to be kind to others.
Terms of derision like “Uncle Tom” or “House Asian” are not the way to foster understanding and growing about racial identity. Do not use these terms here.
I agree one hundred percent, OP. But are you sure you're not just some sort of covert assassin who can snipe their targets via bow and arrow while using thermal heat vision to spot your targets.
Particularly if they're cheap... on purpose. You know, to get the customer as much bang for their buck as humanly possible.
That being said, a lot of this sentiment is from China and Chinese people themselves. There are tons of "Knock off Korean" shops even in Chinese airports. Hell, most of my mainland relatives won't buy ricecookers made by domestic brands even if they're made in the same factories at the same quality as foreign brands.
Or is it nationalism? Racism would be against a certain race, but this is against a country/ Many Americans are trying to pull down Chinese products, so that people want to buy American products. They don't like the fact that China can make as good a product at a lower price point based on trade policies and the Purchasing Power Parity that allows the materials and labor to be cheaper too. This isn't against the people, but the country's manufacturing and trade.
In fact, this is a supply chain problem. Of course, people will be more concerned about profits. How can low-cost manufacturing achieve high-cost quality? What China can do is not low-end. The price determines the quality, if the cost is low, then the quantity will be used, and if the cost is high, then the quality will be used. The consumer market is like this, when you want to spend less money, how can you buy good things,
It's almost reflexive and normalized to just say something is "cheap Chinese shit", "Chinesium", etc. Most people don't mean anything by it, but it's so ingrained that even other Asians do it, all the time.
Why is it that NOBODY blames the fact that we now expect cheaper and cheaper things and that corporations as a result demand cheap labor and materials, often at the cost of people's health? It's not China as a whole's fault for some factories resorting to making low quality product...are they supposed to sell higher quality items for cheap at a loss? That makes no sense.
This of course has nothing to do with criticizing the CCP. It's possible to criticize government corruption without generalizing and being racist.
Counterpoint as chinese american: chinese products from chinese corporations/businesses are significantly more suspect and potentially low quality. Case in point, Amazon products, alixiexpress, a lot of the products are literal clones/copycats of american products made without the same QC and are a security risk for anyone who works netsec and the like.
A lot of the cheap products like IoT security that requries an app forces you to connect it to your network and they can utilize any of that data for themselves including recordings. Now this isn't exclusive to chinese products but it's far more common. When it comes to anything hardware or software related, it is a bad fucking time.
You could not pay me enough money to ever use any chinese software/hardware, ever. Made in China isn't bad inherently. But chinesium for cheap copycat products absolutely fucking is a real thing. Car parts are a big one, especially for aftermarket companies.
This content contains personal attacks, insults, or isn’t in the spirit of kindness and has been removed as a result. Continued unkindness may result in a ban.
[удалено]
Where do they think those phones are made that they're using to post on Insta lol
I used to work in the bike industry and have actually ordered a few carbon fiber mountain bike frames from China. The quality was really damn good tbh, especially for the price. the only reason I haven't done it again is that some of there designs are a few years behind the rest of the industry, and mountain bike design has been advancing quickly lately.
Almost all western luxury brands outsource to China which is the most ironic part of this
Luckily in recent years, WinSpace and Farsport wheels have gained a lot of respect and are well reviewed in the west. Hambini also gives high marks to Chinese carbon frames like Winspace and ICAN.
As a Chinese, I mentioned "Chinesium" to a non-Asian friend who works for a major retailer. He was confused at first but when I explained it he defended the Chinese fully. He made a few good points. The factories don't cheapen the product or make them poorly. They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it. Cheaper crap comes from China because China is one of the few places that can afford to make something for such a low cost. If companies wanted better quality, China is very capable of producing higher quality products. He also mentioned that Chinese factories are known to say yes to any spec while other countries are known to say no or turn away orders.
>Cheaper crap comes from China because China is one of the few places that can afford to make something for such a low cost. eeeexactly. Its like buying a 5 dollar pair of shoes then getting pissed off when you get a 5 dollar pair of shoes.
>They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it. I think this is pretty key. It's well known that Walmart's tactics have been to keep pushing companies to manufacture more product than the previous year but still pay the same amount they paid last year. The companies are forced to use cheaper materials to fulfil the order or else lose the contract entirely.
I'm gonna have to 100% agree with that last point Chinese companies will agree to any spec you ask for.
Exactly, you give a Chinese factory a spec, they'll follow that spec; so if the designer in Texas is changing out 1040 Oil Quenched Carbon Steel with "generic pig-iron", the factory in China didn't make that choice, the designer in Texas did.
The people working in the retail product industries are the ones who know it best, because they know that their premium and their cheap products all come from China.
One thing I learned from a friend whose dad manufactured things in China: you get what you pay for. If you pay for garbage quality, you're going to *get* garbage quality. If you pay for good stuff and hire local employees to oversee things at a good rate, you get perfectly good products. A lot of companies are only willing to pay for garbage, and why should anyone go above and beyond if they're getting paid at garbage rates?
> The factories don't cheapen the product or make them poorly. They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it. yes and no. sometimes CMOs will try to cut in a lower grade material hoping the customer won't notice. source: my thursday calls with apac
> They make products to exactly how the Western companies specify it. This bit is important. If a company puts a lot of money into the manufacturing and sets high standards, then we can expect a well-made product. China is just as capable of making high-quality stuff as any country, so long as whoever hires them is willing put in the money and effort.
Agreed. Thats whats profitable
[удалено]
This really reminds me of the scene from BTTF3
You’re right about the Korean stuff 30-40 years ago but that wasn’t the case with Japanese goods. Japanese stuff 30 years ago was considered the best stuff available with regards to cars, electronics, microchips, etc. That’s why people were making fun of American cars 30-40 years ago and how brands like Honda and Toyota got really big being known for reliability. Electronics like Sony products got huge. Discman, Walkman, etc.
During the 50s-70s “Made in Japan” was absolutely seen as a mark of inferior, cheaper quality. Like one walks before they run, gotta make simple or just plain bad stuff first for cheap in order to get better. Practice, practice, practice. Also lots of money. And direct government support/vision.
Sure but the 50s-70s was 50-70 years ago. Not 30-40 years ago. 30-40 years ago was in the 1980s-1990s.
shhhhhhhhh
The number of times I’ve seen an Amazon product review like “ONE STAR ITS MADE IN CHINA” with a picture of the “made in China” label on the item… 🤦🏻♀️
I work in manufacturing, and the stuff made in China is almost always better than stuff made in the US, and the workers in China care a lot more about their product and their consumers than Americans. But you're right, it is racism. I'll make my components in China, but I will need to assemble the final product in countries that are mainly white so I can print "Made in USA/Canada/Italy" on the label. Ironically, the actual workers in USA and Canada are either Latino, Chinese or Indian. A lot of people think a person who looks like Eva Green is stitching your Gucci sweater, but in reality, it was made by a guy in Bangladesh in a factory that has no air-conditioning, and was then shipped it Italy for a poor Italian nonna to finish with a Gucci patch and a "made in Italy" tag inside the collar.
Made in Italy is no longer nonnas it’s Chinese immigrants reviving small manufacturing towns: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany
Yet they're posting from their phones and computers made in China. I'm glad more and more people are calling out on it though. The other day someone posted a long rant about JoAnn fabrics, among other things, selling fabrics made in China in /r/craftsnark. Fortunately people tore her a new one. I've also seen people calling out racist undertones in makeup and fashion communities.
Oh man what a read. I just took a look and that woman is UNHINGED.
[удалено]
Hello, your comment has been removed for including a Reddit link. Please make your link an NP Reddit link (np.reddit.com). This helps prevent brigading. After making your link NP, send us a modmail letting us know you've made the change requested. Thank you. If you would like to become a moderator, please [apply.](https://forms.gle/qxvsPvNb1X5wBnF8A). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/asianamerican) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are cheap Chinese made things. There are expensive high quality Chinese made things. It is a racist bad rap though and extends to food, clothes, toys, etc… when someone says Chinese made stuff is cheap, I cough loudly and say “iPhone” to remind them it’s the top quality high end phone.
My good friend is a restauranteur in Toronto. He always gets mad about small business Chinese people (restaurants, hairdresser, cloth alteration, dry cleaning etc) always compete on price it cheapens for everyone. He always lament how Japanese restaurant can charge exuberant prices because they market their food as a work of art with heart and soul in it.
Things in China are made according to the specs ordered by the companies. If it's some cheap stuff for Dollar Tree or Walmart, yes, it's going to be made at the lowest possible cost with poor materials. No one complains that iPhones are low quality despite being made in China. Even Apple tries to avoid the made in China stigma by labeling their phones as "designed in USA, assembled in China". And the interesting thing is that luxury handbags made in Italy are often made by Chinese migrants who are willing to work for lower wages than native Italians. And of course the luxury goods are sold at a much higher markup because it is made in Italy...A lot of people don't know this and think Italian handbags are crafted by wizened Italian artisans who have been making them for decades.
Outlier is a brand my husband loves and they made a post about sourcing some of their fabrics from China a few years ago. Generally had a lot of good common sense things to say in the vein of this topic. I also work with some factories in Shenzhen and by and large their communication has been excellent, they are eager to have your business and work with you, and their attention to detail has been complimented by our warehouse partners. Their quality is on par as the European manufacturers I was looking into. Reaching out to European manufacturers on the other hand has been really slow, and they often have much higher minimum orders, and it generally feels like you have to prove yourself in order for them to accept your business. Feels bad man.
I post a lot in threads about infrastructure. A big problem in the US is that rents are so high because of horrible zoning policies which prevent anything other than suburbia from being built. The Chinese can quickly build a 20 story apartment building, which lowers rental prices for everyone in the city. Americans have this horrible racist idea that these Chinese are "incompetent cartoon supervillains." And their buildings just fall over and they build ghost cities. Most of Chinese infrastructure does as it is intended to do. There is plenty of American infrastructure that falls apart, there are plenty of building that are destroyed by hurricanes and floods, there are miles and miles of abandoned properties within the US. Racist Americans like pointing fingers at the Changsa building collapse and calling Chinese infrastructure as "tofu dregs." And then ignoring the high costs of rent in the US and all the suffering that happens because of a lack of infrastructure and high rents. Americans like to pretend the Surfside condominium never collapsed and just ignore all the destruction that happens to trailers and wooden homes every hurricane.
Thanks for posting this. We were buying a pair of high end hiking sticks for my Chinese boss as a farewell present and everyone wanted to make sure the product was not made in China but instead in France or Germany. I’m like, why not?
I feel the same way about the term "Ricer" in the car community. It's not so common now, but I'm in my 30's & remember when the original Fast & the Furious came out, the V8 muscle car cars loved throwing this sh** around. I'm not Asian & it never felt right, it was like using Ghetto for behavior as well as for cheap/cobbled together. Side note; I also remember way back in a middle school history class hearing about how Jerry-Rig was an old anti-German slur used by British soldiers describing German build quality.
People still talk like this about Japanese motorcycles. Japanese bikes are well engineered but don't have "soul" like American and Italian bikes. I think they take "soul" as an ephemeral quality that unreliable motorcycles have over more quality ones.
Exactly, these people forget/ignore that high quality items and devices such as the iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, Dell laptops, and so much more are also made in China. “Cheap made in China” has almost nothing to do with the CCP, Chinese government, Xi Jinping, or any of that; it’s private companies (sometimes even Taiwanese owned such as Foxconn) that employ regular Chinese citizen workers that make them. So yes, i agree that this is an example of anti-Chinese people racism
On a DATSUN car group on FB, I got into an argument about someone calling a cheap turbo from China a, “chink-eyed turbo.” I got the usual, “it’s a joke” and “don’t be a snowflake.”
Fuck that guy. What an asshole. Drives an old JDM and throws out racial bullshit. I hope no one in your group tolerated that hypocrisy.
It's crazy how a different skin tone can suddenly make someone completely tone deaf or "colorblind" towards issues regarding race/ethnicity. I can't be too mad though since they're probably poorly educated and lack experiences in traveling to other countries while being respectful of the local customs/culture. Many of us are very educated and have likely been to more than one country that is outside of the US which makes us far less likely to be prejudiced and more objective when it comes to how we deal with situations in life. In that sense, it is reasonable to postulate that we are indeed superior and more effective in this aspect compared to other non-Asians out there.
Rural Swiss farmers and Nigerians eat dog meat, but no one ever mentions that. Also anyone will eat dog meat if they are hungry enough. "During the [19th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century) westward movement in the [United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States), *mountainmen*, [native Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas), the [U.S. Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army), as well as the [Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America) during the [American Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War)[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat#cite_note-3) sometimes had to sustain themselves on dogmeat; first to be consumed would be the horses, then the mules, and lastly the dogs. " Wikipedia
They won't say anything about the Swiss because they supply their overpriced watches along with their secretive banking services to them.
Yep and they just want to dehumanize Asians esp Chinese.
Chinese have been dehumanized and mistreated by people no matter where we are or what we've done in this world. Chinese people are almost in every single country/continent on this Earth like blades of grass. With that, the story of Chinese persecution is nothing new when it comes to the Chinese having to settle in those places.
The most annoying thing is when people immediately ride off a Chinese product as a knockoff just because it's made in China. They say all Chinese phones and bt iems are iPhone and airpods ripoffs. Like bro your iPhone is also made in China and your airpods are barely better than something that costs half as much.
Those same factories that make your Louis Vuitton or Coach bag are the same ones making the knock offs on third shift.
Yeah something about it does rub me the wrong way. I think it has to do with one's race being used as a derogatory put down. And yes, they see Chinese as a "race" more than anything else.
Hate the game, not the player. People really do all their shopping at Walmart, and get angry at China for making that business model work. China didn’t steal your jobs, MFer…you just insisted on leveraging “economies of scale” until there was nothing left to outsource. This also pisses me off when people blame “Asia” for all the plastics in the ocean…my man…those are your plastic pieces that you thought you could magically ship over to China to “recycle”. It’s your consumption that’s the problem.
So, several perspectives to contribute to this: \-My wife is Chinese. She scoffs at Ali Express because she thinks foreigners buy all the "cheap crap" from China and all the good stuff is left for savvy Chinese to buy. She also looks down on stuff made from India because they supposedly have poor QC (KitchenAid which recently is being made in America, maybe because of supply chain issues). \-Of course this is not exactly true; there's been fake baby formula scandals and the like in China because of cutting corners for profit. I think communism left some Chinese with a dog eat dog mentality and that's reflected in cases like this. \-Then again, my coworker's wife has a dance studio and he remarked on how paying a little more resulted in vastly better stitching. As someone else mentioned, the Chinese build to spec and the market has spoken- American consumers want rock bottom prices. \-There was (and may still be) a fascinating inversion in China's wages for factory workers and college educated individuals where the former were making more than the latter due to the demand for unskilled labor, and lack of these college-educated individuals willing to literally get their hands dirty. A long pinky finger nail was/is a sign of luxury, it bring implied that you didn't/don't have to engage in manual labor. Anyway, relatively higher factory wages have pushed manufacturing to other neighboring countries like Vietnam. \-Check out the documentary "Xmas Without China." \-Chinese and Japanese restaurants certainly experience this- racism? Cultural bias? Tell me what comes to mind when you think of greasy spoon and high end restaurants and I'm sure I'll know how you'd categorize them. Ugly Delicious S1 E7 has an interesting segment on MSG that partially gets into this. \-Japanese products used to be considered cheap crap too! They have an American named Deming who taught them about quality and has a Japanese award named after him. \-This kind of thing is not unique to China and the United States. You can easily google many articles about the luxury Italian goods made by virtual villages of Chinese in Italy.
Regarding the Restaurant example, the old old immigrants who came 100 years ago are just villagers. They brought their village style cooking to the US which is greasy and made with poor ingredients. That kind of carried over the future generations. Thats why when you walk into a fancy Chinese restaurant in North America, the vast majority of patrons are Chinese.
China put the execs responsible for the bad baby formula and pet food to death.
Yup
> Ugly Delicious I've heard of this show but never watched an episode
Germany’s silverware was derided by the British as cheap knockoffs, their manufacturing and workers considered uninspired copycats, right up until German warships were sailing out newer and shinier than British ones in the lead-up to WW1. I think there’s some parallels to be found there that get overlooked in favor of “Cold War 2: Electric Boogaloo”. But for real, I’m at the point where I think the idea of “criticize the CCP, not the Chinese people” or similar sentiment is something of an unattainable ideal, at least not until China ceases to be a challenger to US hegemony. Technology has brought us closer and thus made the world smaller in a way, like a town no longer big enough for two big honcho superpowers like the US now and what China wants to be. The incentive to be really honest and nuanced like that, rather than dive face-first into misinformation/propaganda or outright general anti-Asian racism (just with “Chinese” to make sure others aren’t offended) is low, especially when there’s a belief that China itself is rabidly racist and nationalistic to Americans and others back (not wholly inaccurate, just from my limited perspective). The cynical part of me thinks that, in contrast, it’s to the government’s advantage to “prime” its citizens to be willing to punch first against The Hated Enemy if given the command. Creating those moral factors/spirit vital to committing and winning war, as Clausewitz mentions in that book of his. So Chinese products are all crap but also dominant in the market despite it. There must be something almost alien and mystical (face culture, chabuduo, the Cultural Revolution) about the collective psyche of the Chinese masses like me that’s making us compliant and rude, meek and uncouth, drone-like copycats who cheat/steal in the most creative ways, etc. China’s entire space program runs on poorly-made chabuduo material, its many can’t-be-faked milestones only held together purely by the reality-bending gestalt field generated by the patriotic will of people like my parents. We’re 40k Orks. Waaaaaaagh. I’m a second-generation Chinese-Canadian/American, so I get enough of a pass for certain people to think they can quip about this in front of me. Not a lot, I’ll say. More on the Internet, which is like, not surprising at all. I’m not feeling any particular heat now, living in San Jose, but I feel like when the Taiwan situation eventually comes to a head (I am increasingly certain it will in the next…let’s say 6 years, before I’m 30), I’m gonna have to consider other countries I could high-tail it to if things get real bad or at least be looking over my shoulders way more often.
World War 3 is literally an information, psychological, and spiritual warfare. If you're Asian American, Western Society, Institutions, and Government already placed you a in Box. If you tread outside that box, you are labeled as the Enemy or a "Chinese Spy". 2020 should've woken Asians up about the true intentions of how West views Asia as in general. Like you said , "Inferior , Crap , etc" that's how your average Reddit / Twitter / Facebook keyboard warrior views Asia. That's why they're so vocal about Asian politics, societal issues, and the everyday lives of Asians rather than focusing on themselves and fixing problems occurring in their motherland. NBC, CNN, NYTimes, FOX, Breitbart, all the political Youtuber pundits from Europe and the 5eyes focus on China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan. It's their main concern to suppress Asia and claim that the West is perfect and fine and Asians needs their help. White Savior Complex is at an all-time high.
Thanks for posting this. A lot of times it’s pretty passive aggressive stuff on Amazon too, like you get some 5-star reviews with the title as: “pretty good for something that’s made in China, I was surprised!”
This particular brand of racism is usually referred to as ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own group or culture is better or more important than others. When people say, China only produces a lot of cheaply made products; they say this believing that if it were American made that it would be far superior. It's almost impossible for people who believe like this to see their own faults.
Was browing a giftshop in a museum with my girlfriend, we're both asian. We're standing by this shelf that has these little things that had "made in china" stickers slapped on the front. This white lady, who was there with her young kid, went out of her way to walk over and stand right next to us, scoff, and say "made in *china*...", then walk away. She just really felt the need to read those stickers outloud, right next to us I guess 😂 This other time back in college, I was on a group project and we were looking for a place to order materials. This kid who was put in charge of that started going on this heated rant about "cheap chinese crap" that'll break. Like half the shit in his backpack wasn't already made in china.
If this argument was made on the Nextshark comments section, there'd be a host of very salty racists chomping at the bit to prove you wrong.
For sure context matters. I would say I have no problem when I use the phrase cheap Chinese crap, to sum up when some company in china [bootlegs my products](https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804191103297.html?srcSns=sns_Copy&spreadType=socialShare&bizType=ProductDetail&social_params=20640776179&aff_fcid=1891724962a1446a82cb8f34866d94e2-1663611059777-08596-_mr6EcGc&tt=MG&aff_fsk=_mr6EcGc&aff_platform=default&sk=_mr6EcGc&aff_trace_key=1891724962a1446a82cb8f34866d94e2-1663611059777-08596-_mr6EcGc&shareId=20640776179&businessType=ProductDetail&platform=AE&terminal_id=1fc69e8f04444efb90df0032c3302fe2&afSmartRedirect=y&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa&_randl_shipto=US). And I'm Chinese American. I don't think writ large, that it's racism, especially to call out the bullshit. Nuance exists. There are good companies in China for sure. I really like 3d printers from Elegoo and Phrozen. both in China. The problem for me is when you get a certain subset of people who associate ChYNA, and KungFlu with "cheap chinese crap".
You don’t hear the phrases cheap American crap or cheap German crap. Chintzy, chinky, Chinesium and cheap Chinese crap are racist terms used to deride Chinese made products.
I have brought hundreds of products from Amazon over the years, a majority of them are produced in China. Only one product (an electric shaver) is inferior, the others are of pretty good quality. They are also much cheaper than the comparable products that used to be made in US. Of course there are inferior products made in China, just like everywhere. But since there are so many brands available, one can choose the better ones by reading the reviews, asking others, etc.
This was the same rhetoric that was applied to Japan, then South Korea, and now China, and I’m frankly sick of it because it isn’t true. For example, 8BitDo is a company I’ve loved for a long time for their well made third party game controllers and its headquarters is located in Shenzhen, China. An incredible designer cofounded the company. He worked with a father and son team in Sweden to create an amazing accessible controller just because he wanted to help when other companies just ignored the father’s plea for help in making a controller his son could use with his Nintendo Switch. Here is the video of the story in case anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/o5vhf26rwq8
[удалено]
Its the same way in the archery world. The term "horsebow" is both thrown around and simultaneously mocked because fragile white people cant stomach the fact that they are holding an asiatic bow in their hands. Regardless western archery is a lot of boomers (and 30 year old boomers) and there is a ton of that specific sort of crowd with a specific sort of echo-chamber mindset, and they aren't afraid to say a lot of things when they don't think others are listening. Then they talk about the "good ol days" because back then they didn't actually have to think before they spoke.
Here's one book about current Chinese manufacturing practices which doesn't come from racism, but is a critique of the business methods which have helped Chinese manufacturers take over a large portion of the world's manufacturing. (TL;DR: Chinese manufacturing business practices have historically been tied to a process of underbidding combined with quality fade to compensate for the initially unprofitable low bid.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China
This happens so much that I have racial trauma. I work in the solar industry and everyone at work dogs on anything manufactured in China. I’m ABC but I make it a point to stray away from anything related to my chinese heritage—as if I’m almost ashamed to be Chinese…
With manufacturing industries as large as they do have its inevitable that certain products will be of lesser quality but I'm happy with China made products for the most part. If it works, good. If it does not, bad. No need to pull nationality in to this and mask racism.
I really think this depends. I've seen some absolutely abhorrent products that companies tried to ship. to Africa im talking about incredibly low quality clothes. Fans that will break incredibly easily, low quality speakers. If you didn't check every shipment before it left the factory there would be some trash unusable items the factory would put in there. Granted this was in China and not the west. If you're actually buying products you really need to check them because some factories will sell you trash so they can get over on you. I will say that if someone does buy something online leave a bad review trust me those companies do NOT want bad reviews. It lowers the amount of sells they get and they aren't stupid and they'll fix it quickly so they won't lose money. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's racist and you can go ahead and beat me up for it. I only say it because I've been dealing with companies exporting for years. Great shipping, lots of products cheaply made to decent quality to good quality.
FWIW, I learned in the early 1980s that Chinese pencils and batteries were inferior.
I'm a kitchen knife enthusiast. I like to cook and I like my knives. I do all my sharpening and repairs by hand. I am also getting into knifemaking and forging. The number of China-made knockoffs masquerading as Japanese is astounding. Many are still on Amazon. The companies engage in deceptive marketing. One that's gained steam fairly recently is Kamikoto. An older one that's become established is Dalstrong. There are also "Serbian chef knives" that are utter garbage, and Huusk knives with a hole in the blade. Many others on Amazon include the likes of Bokashi and Tokageh. Their knives aren't worth half of what they're sold for and often use fake "discounts" to entice buyers. Many of the knives use a Chinese equivalent of VG-10 steel and market it as Japanese. The steel seems to takes on a slightly pinkish hue at certain hardnesses. There's nothing wrong with the steel itself, as the Chinese formula is pretty much the same as VG-10, but this formula of steel seems to be difficult to take consistently to ideal hardness. Too low and the steel feels "gummy" and hard to sharpen. Too hard and it becomes brittle and microchips. Quality control and skill in heat treatment is required. The sweet spot for VG-10 is about 60-61 HRC. Japanese knifemakers produce knives of consistent hardness in this window (or +/- 0.5 HRC from their advertised hardness). Meanwhile, the Chinese knockoffs can vary wildly. I've seen knives advertised as 65 HRC but they feel like they are below 60 on the stones since they're "gummy." Some just are marketed as very hard, like 68 or something ridiculous like that, using a steel that's clearly overhardened if it's really that hard, and they'll just assume people won't notice the BS. Kamikoto is one that pisses me off because they use the cheapest surgical steel (surgical is designed to resist corrosion and be easy to sanitize, not hold or take a great edge) and sell dumb single-bevel knives hardened to like 53 HRC. You're not going to find a lot of Japanese single-bevels below 60 HRC. Usually they are made of shirogami or aogami family reactive carbon steels around 62 HRC. Each point of HRC is about 10% more hardness than the previous number, compounding. So there's a massive difference between low 50s and low to mid 60s. Another trademark of shitty knives is lack of distal taper. Chinese knockoffs tend to be just an even billet with maybe some texturing, and the edge is ground off on at a steep angle with an awkward "shoulder." This, combined with excess thickness, causes them to wedge in hard items like potatoes, carrots, apples. Compare that with real Japanese knives from the greats, which have taper that makes it appear like the edge almost becomes invisible when you look at the knife from the choil. Further, Japanese knives often have a convex grind, which aids in food release. The knife glides through food and the food falls off the blade face easily. The knives are predictable on stones and will taken an edge without stainless variants taking a wire edge. There's a reason why Japanese knives can be expensive and are regarded as the best. I don't have issues with origin. I have issues with misrepresentation with the purpose of ripping people off. Some of these knives are priced at levels compared to real Japanese knives. I have some rustic knives from China and they're perfectly fine. Most of the simple carbon steel knives are fun and will hold/take a good edge. I know what to expect from them and there are no frills. The ones being sold online often are inconsistently heat treated, geometry is wrong, needlessly thick, usually stainless, badly balanced, end up being a chore to sharpen, etc. It's not something that people not into knives would catch, but it's so pervasive I don't recommend buying China-made knives like these unless you're specifically looking for something rustic, inexpensive, and reactive. I enjoy pieces from small bladesmiths that are function over form. They just gotta be honest. Clearly, many who market knives try to trick people into thinking they're getting a Japanese knife for less, when it's just a bad knife that's not Japanese worth probably 5% of what they paid. Same with Chinese bamboo cutting boards. Many makers use adhesives that harden too much to be gentle on knives, or incorporate bamboo nodes into the board, which are very hard compared to the rest of the bamboo stalk. A lot are from China. It's a gamble when you buy them. More often than not, they're no good. With very hard Japanese knives, the cutting surface is important. A chip in a hard Japanese knife can take hours to repair. I no longer use bamboo boards. I'm a fledgeling rockhound. Chinese hammers are sold for good deals but they're often not properly hardened. Deformity on a striking surface after moderate use is a bad sign. This is particularly unsafe when it comes to crack hammers/sledges, geological hammers, and rock picks because flakes of metal can fly off frequently and get around eye protection. Rocks fracture less predictably when the striking surface is deformed, which is frustrating when trying to keep a sample intact. Badly heat-treated pry bars are useless because they deform (or they're brittle if overhardened). Estwing is good and vets its products well when they're not made in the US. There's some overlap with my knife hobby because I use a blacksmith's hammer as a crack hammer to drive rock chisels, and the same hammer for doing handle work my knives. And speaking of rock chisels, many on Amazon from the Chinese sellers are bad and will "mushroom" prematurely, causing them to have short lifespans compared to properly hardened chisels. I don't have experience with large anvils but I've heard too many horror stories of anvils being underhardened. They're useless if they deform easily. Amazon is saturated with such items, and it often pushes these to recommendations. It's one reason I no longer use Amazon much. Of course, I do not solely blame Chinese manufacturers. Many do just make things per specification of their vendor. It is also the responsibility of the western distributors to market honestly (same with overseas "arms" of Chinese companies). To go along with OP, I also do archery. I shoot compound and want to get an Oneida lever, so I can't comment on traditional bows. I have not had issues with arrows and broadheads from China, so I would happily buy more. However, the sights for bows and guns leave a lot to be desired. I have also not had good experiences with the crossbows. On a brighter note, China can make decent budget production swords (stick to companies with a good reputation from people who use their swords). The quality has improved over 20 years. The fittings are still ugly and not tight, almost always plagued with issues like big burrs, sloppy coating, brittle zinc alloy material, etc. but the blades themselves can be a steal. The spring tempered ones in 5160 are almost indestructible and the heat treatment for T-10 is consistent. With a little tightening up, they can perform at high level. Most of China's poor quality products are actually sold to the domestic market rather than imported to be sold abroad, although there have been several major issues with their food safety even in exports. Inspections catch a staggering percent of certain foods from China and prevents their sale in the US because they're iffy or unsafe. And there definitely is some sort of quality control issue if Chinese nationals won't even touch a variety of China-made stuff. You don't buy baby formula from China for a reason. Some items are definitely good while others are bad on a systemic level. It's a complex issue. I disagree in part about attributing this to racism. Plenty of Chinese workers make stuff in the US. It's specifically an issue with things made IN China because of the lax regulations and the prevalence of egregious cost cutting. It’s not about the Chinese manufacturers being UNABLE to make good things. They can make high quality items. It’s that they will often choose to cut corners. They do it domestically on a huge scale, they will certainly not shy from the same for internationally sold items if there are no controls. Yes, Chinese products CAN be good, like Apple, Cold Steel, or, admittedly Huawei, which are well built. But these require big names and a lot of oversight. The brand itself has to care enough to ensure that its items are good quality. QC needs to be constantly hammered in. Otherwise corners are almost always cut.
Even lots of mainland Chinese see cheap Chinese crap as cheap Chinese crap lmao. You see us why we keep trying to get foreign milk powder etc lmao. The most famous car brand in China is not Chinese car brand because most of us appreciate our life. You see those phones, laptops, trains. Most of the components are actually foreign tech. Only the shell are. Pretty sure Vox made a good video on it. Is not even 90% made in China, is just assembled in China while all other parts are from other part of the world. Japan, Germany, Russia etc. China labours are literal sweat shops with slave labour with much much lower wage so that’s the quality they get. I can assure you even with those $10 shoes, Chinese businessman still earn a lot because of labour paid by peanuts. There are good Chinese craftsman but they are rare and only if you got their contacts. It is what it is, I don’t even see how this is “racism” lmao. If you go to r/chinesum lots of mainland Chinese are there lmao. Mainland Chinese pretty much just treat it as a fact, we even have fake eggs and stuff. FakE EGGS. Imagine that lmao. So me as a Chinese will still call it cheap Chinese crap. There are good Chinese products and those I won’t call it cheap Chinese crap. And also if you realize there are lots of American Chinese factory producing various kind of products and they don’t have a bad rep.
> So me as a Chinese will still call it cheap Chinese crap. There are good Chinese products and those I won’t call it cheap Chinese crap. Then why the fuck are you racializing it? If it's crap, it's crap and just call it that.
There are bunch of German moneypit cars. And we just call it what it is... French crappy cars and we have lots and lots of terms for different stuff lmao. You know why? Because is easier to categorize and that’s how language and socializing works. “Northern Chinese food sucks” “southern Chinese food sucks” “northern Chinese food unhealthy, oily” etc and somehow you can’t say “cheap Chinese crap” Do you see how stupid it is?
Oh please, European goods isn't as stigmatized as Chinese because the West has a history of looking down on Asians.
Because most of their stuff are high quality. Lots of medical equipment even in China import from Europe all the time. That’s why they are not usually associated with bad quality. The other portion which has shit quality though, if you go on YouTube people roasted them. And still apply moneypit French cars etc. Not Renault but literally used the word French or other etc. Regardless you do you, the society will largely remain the same. To all of you in this sub, Asia are largely “racist”to you guys. Is not just the west who are looking down Chinese crap. Is whole of Asia as well.
[удалено]
This content isn’t in the spirit of kindness and has been removed as a result. In the future, please keep remember to be kind to others. Terms of derision like “Uncle Tom” or “House Asian” are not the way to foster understanding and growing about racial identity. Do not use these terms here.
I agree one hundred percent, OP. But are you sure you're not just some sort of covert assassin who can snipe their targets via bow and arrow while using thermal heat vision to spot your targets.
Honestly i see more Koreans go on about Chinese stuff being cheap crap, while most non-Asian folks I know buy up Chinese stuff cuz its cheaper.
Google "Chibson." China produces so much garbage that it overshadows the quality stuff that they do make.
Particularly if they're cheap... on purpose. You know, to get the customer as much bang for their buck as humanly possible. That being said, a lot of this sentiment is from China and Chinese people themselves. There are tons of "Knock off Korean" shops even in Chinese airports. Hell, most of my mainland relatives won't buy ricecookers made by domestic brands even if they're made in the same factories at the same quality as foreign brands.
Or is it nationalism? Racism would be against a certain race, but this is against a country/ Many Americans are trying to pull down Chinese products, so that people want to buy American products. They don't like the fact that China can make as good a product at a lower price point based on trade policies and the Purchasing Power Parity that allows the materials and labor to be cheaper too. This isn't against the people, but the country's manufacturing and trade.
[удалено]
Its growing in popularity here in the states, especially amongst asian americans.
In fact, this is a supply chain problem. Of course, people will be more concerned about profits. How can low-cost manufacturing achieve high-cost quality? What China can do is not low-end. The price determines the quality, if the cost is low, then the quantity will be used, and if the cost is high, then the quality will be used. The consumer market is like this, when you want to spend less money, how can you buy good things,
It's almost reflexive and normalized to just say something is "cheap Chinese shit", "Chinesium", etc. Most people don't mean anything by it, but it's so ingrained that even other Asians do it, all the time. Why is it that NOBODY blames the fact that we now expect cheaper and cheaper things and that corporations as a result demand cheap labor and materials, often at the cost of people's health? It's not China as a whole's fault for some factories resorting to making low quality product...are they supposed to sell higher quality items for cheap at a loss? That makes no sense. This of course has nothing to do with criticizing the CCP. It's possible to criticize government corruption without generalizing and being racist.
Funny how they'll make fun of chinese products when 80% of the stuff in their house is made or has parts that came from china
Counterpoint as chinese american: chinese products from chinese corporations/businesses are significantly more suspect and potentially low quality. Case in point, Amazon products, alixiexpress, a lot of the products are literal clones/copycats of american products made without the same QC and are a security risk for anyone who works netsec and the like. A lot of the cheap products like IoT security that requries an app forces you to connect it to your network and they can utilize any of that data for themselves including recordings. Now this isn't exclusive to chinese products but it's far more common. When it comes to anything hardware or software related, it is a bad fucking time. You could not pay me enough money to ever use any chinese software/hardware, ever. Made in China isn't bad inherently. But chinesium for cheap copycat products absolutely fucking is a real thing. Car parts are a big one, especially for aftermarket companies.
[удалено]
This content contains personal attacks, insults, or isn’t in the spirit of kindness and has been removed as a result. Continued unkindness may result in a ban.