China produces some excellent quality, and a vast amount of awful quality as for the last couple of decades that has been their selling point.

It's not so long ago that it was Japan that produced mostly crap and made lots of inferior copies of western goods. They moved past it, and now are often superior, as will China.

I see it not as China bashing more brand bashing. There's an expectation of quality from some of the old names that built reputation making a particular product. In the main, quality manufacturers that have moved production elsewhere have lost a lot of that quality - wherever they moved it to. Just the same happens when brands become just a word in someone's brand portfolio after they've been bought up a time or two.

e.g. Fiskars are huge and spent the 2000's buying up dozens of famous international luxury brands, closing their factories, and selling much inferior, made elsewhere, products on those brand names.

Yeah, it's not so much China per se as once quality brands increasingly churning out mediocre goods at low costs in various overseas factories. Mind you, the trend of retail conglomerates, private equity firms, etc. owning a bunch of brand names/catalogs is nothing new. But current trends towards disposable goods, fast fashion, etc. have exacerbated it.

I don’t agree with the comparisons with Japan in the 80’s. It seems like every time someone bring ups China’s manufacturing, they have to somehow relate to Japan’s past. For one, Japan isn’t an authoritarian rule and second, we are about 4 decades into the future. There was no e-commerce, no internet, na completely different world. Commerce wasn’t the same as it is today. Furthermore, Chinese and Japanese values are on opposite side of the spectrum.

...and? Before Japan it was Hong Kong and South Korea making the crap, before that someone else. South Korea was authoritarian and autocratic, whilst its economy grew at breakneck pace starting in the 60s, and remained so until the late 90s. Japan had democracy thrust upon it rather earlier for well known reasons.

They all seem to take a markedly similar approach to development catch-up, namely a heavy emphasis on education and steadily moving from cheap and inferior copies to local innovation and quality. China is well along that route.

Authoritarianism doesn't rule out development, neither does democracy.

During the 80s Japan was ruled the a single party that had been in power since the end of WW2.

Exactly. It's strange how a lot of people just lump all these various companies together and just call it "China."

There are tons of Chinese companies that make extremely high quality stuff. You just have to be willing to pay for it.