"Jon Anderson" wrote in message ...
On 3/6/2012 11:07 PM, Donn Messenheimer wrote:

40 years ago, people were saying the same things about Japanese
manufacturing. My younger brother was a fairly typical gearhead mechanic
in those days, and they all referred to Japanese cars as "Jap crap."
Look where that attitude got the American car companies.

Yup. What I tell people that think China -can't- produce quality, is
they are only the third nation to put a man in space. Even though
they've been able to learn heaps from the USA and USSR on how to do it,
it still demands an exceptionally high degree of manufacturing and
quality control. Too many things to go wrong to pull that off with a bit
of 'Right Stuff' bravado.


The Chinese military industrial sector is probably more of an anomaly, than it is an accurate reflection of the China's overall average mainstream manufacturing prowess.

They are making dirt cheap stuff because people are buying it...

And because a relatively small number of Chinese nationals are getting themselves filthy rich by paying their workers at near-poverty wages--very similar to the situation that exists here in the USA