Talking about India for a moment, if you ask any Indian living in India (or a recent emigrant) about "bending rules", it's certain that they will say it happens

Talking about India for a moment, if you ask any Indian living in India (or a recent emigrant) about "bending rules", it's certain that they will say it happens all the time, everywhere, in every industry, in every government department/ministry, and that that's how things are and have been. It's an accepted sense of resignation in the mindset of people. This also triggers a mindset to "just get things done at any cost", as the article describes (usually this kind of corruption starts at the top levels of a company). If you get goods made in China, I doubt if you can be sure of the quality unless you go there, stay there, live there, and work there to make sure that those companies understand what you need and are doing the right things in the right way and not cutting corners. IMO, all this is the price you pay for getting "cheap stuff" from a remote place with a different culture and history. I'm not implying that everything (or even the majority of things) made in the U.S. automatically comes at a better level of quality — there is no denying that fraud and "bending rules" are universal. What matters is how much can be controlled and what compromises one is willing to make. It just so happens that large markets with higher costs that need cheaper stuff on one hand, and countries that want higher exports and have weaker systems (policies, laws, law enforcement) on the other hand make this issue much larger and difficult to deal with. I personally don't think there are any easy or quick solutions here that can retain the costs at current levels while achieving everything else. Something must give.