"J. Clarke" wrote:
....
Probably just the same kind of xenophobia that caused people in the '50s and
early '60s to put down Japanese products before they got a load of Sony and
Nikon.
....

Well, maybe a little, but the real reason was that from the period after
WWII, Japan had no manufacturing of significance left and much of the
production from there was inferior....this changed over time (thanks a
lot to they're having paid attention to Deming while he could get no
more than lip service from most American manufacturers of the time). It
took a long time to overcome the previous perceptions even when they
were no longer generally true...

A similar effect is occurring in RPC now...some products are not only
inexpensive, they're cheap. Others rate as well as any produced
anywhere in the world.