That isn't entirely true. There are large Chinese firms with intense R&D, and many 'Western' companies do high added value work in China. There is a political n

That isn't entirely true. There are large Chinese firms with intense R&D, and many 'Western' companies do high added value work in China. There is a political narrative that we are being asked to believe that is not entirely true. That said, a lot of manufacturing firms there compete on price. Three big factors in manufacturing quality are - how good is your factory equipment, how much human (error) is involved, and how much of your product are you willing to throw away. In the 1980s/90s, not only manufacturing jobs, but also equipment headed east. Those same 30 year old production lines are still in use at the lower levels of Chinese manufacturing, being used for processes they really were not designed for. Because of the low cost of labour there is a lower force towards automation. I've seen cell phone production lines that are pretty much by hand in CN, and simple boards assembled by huge machines without human interaction in the west. Hell, I've seen items being hand painted that could have been spray painted because spray paint was too expensive. Humans make mistakes. The biggest factor though is yield. On TFT screens, something like 80% were thrown away at one stage. Throwing away only the worst 10% greatly reduces your price, but also means you are shipping much more variable stuff. Basically, if you want cheap stuff, you get bad stuff. It's not that China can't make high quality goods, it's that people want cheap goods.