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Is there a particularly high quality product that is designed, engineered, produced and then sold from China?

Lenovo is the old IBM laptop division that was sold off.

Understood; that's where the ThinkPad name (and red clit) came from. But that was 16 years ago, and I'm pretty sure they've had to develop and launch at least one or two new models since then.
 
Hot asian chicks?

R

They run a distant seventh to a bit further South. If you want attractive girls much better to go to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Japan or even Vietnam than China.
 
Olight flash lights . Designed and manufactured in Guangdong China. International distribution network in most countries. I’ve used Olight for years and they are very very good.

Sort of China, Giant Bicycles based in Taichung City, Taiwan. World leader in and carbon fiber bikes. Some of the other major bike companies that sublet to Giant are Scott and Trek.
 
DJI drones, there are more in security cameras AI, Hikvision, medical equipment
 
this wasn’t designed or engineered in china


Just like the Mauser 98 action based rifles and carbines, many which are still being used by hunters all across China...

Zhongzheng and Hanyang Mauser clones are some of the best Mausers out there. The Hanyang factory began operations in 1872 and their first products were copies of US Spencer .56-50 carbines for use by the Qing Dynasty Xing Jun Dui (New Army Corps). Just in time to crush the East Turkestan revolts in Xinjiang and they crushed it with even more brutal efficiency than they did with the Taiping Rebellion a decade earlier.

By 1890, Hanyang was exclusively manufacturing bolt action rifles with the legendary Mauser system. Zhongzheng Machine Tools Co. came onto the scene in 1900 and began doing the same thing. Both companies were absorbed into Norinco in 1953, just like how the Tangshan Tractor and Motorcar Works, born in 1888, turned into FAW (First Automotive Works), under the CCP...
 
Here is the kicker on this: there are a number of LIPO and LION battery manufacturers in the world, but most of their lithium comes from China. Mexico is another source. This is one of the examples I was referring to - just because it is made in another country doesn't mean that there is not Chinese made material resident in the product. A number of the battery companies claim to be made in other places only to find out upon questioning that they have the cells made in China.
 
Fascinating really.....i should have considered bicycles and of course fireworks. I must admit i'm becoming a big fan of their (translated) literature though i struggle with their poetry.

As a nation, they are beginning to produce and accrue Nobel Laureates...mostly science (some literature, medicine and peace). I would imagine as technology forces, or at least fosters world wide interaction and perusal this dynamic will dramatically change.
 
No one can blame them really. Its completely a waste of ones time to work hard to be successful in China when you're hard work and effort will go to the enrichment of the elite.
True that, but they all think that way. I was dealing with on to manufacture crankshaft and rods for us. He couldn't understand why .001" made any difference or if the rod pin hole was thr same size as the pin. Even after showing him why, he just grunted and walked off. He had 700 crankshaft made for small block Ford with big block main journals. The cost to regrind and heat treat was more than the cost of the crank. That was a$100,000 mistake he could have avoided if he would have just listened to us. But you can't tell them anything....just as with libs.
 
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Sort of China, Giant Bicycles based in Taichung City, Taiwan. World leader in and carbon fiber bikes. Some of the other major bike companies that sublet to Giant are Scott and Trek.

Giant kicks ass when it comes to manufacturing frames, and assembling complete bicycles. But the component side is still ruled by companies based outside of China - Shimano, SRAM/Rockshox, DT, etc. Many of those parts are manufactured in China, but designed elsewhere.

China will likely rule the e-bike market.
 
BTW Taichung City, Taiwan is not China. The younger Taiwanese don’t want China anywhere near them. China must be freaking out as the older generation that left China are now dying out and the younger generations want nothing to do with China. Even if China became a Democracy the younger generations already consider Taiwan it’s own country and still wouldn’t want to join with China.
 
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What they are good at is stealing technology and manipulating markets. I think that the statistic is that a product or technology only lasts about 3 mos before it is copied and reverse engineered for Chinese production.

We are at the edge of a raw materials crisis. Rare earth metals are used in every digital screen, phone, and circuit boards. In addition they are used in the military for radars and low observable coatings. China currently has control of 90%+ of not only the raw materials but also the refining and extraction facilities.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...e-earth-trade-war-vulnerability-idUSKCN1TS3AQ
 
BTW Taichung City, Taiwan is not China. The younger Taiwanese don’t want China anywhere near them. China must be freaking out as the older generation that left China are now dying out and the younger generations want nothing to do with China. Even if China became a Democracy the younger generations already consider Taiwan it’s own country and still wouldn’t want to join with China.
I know it’s not China, that’s why I said Chinaish implying that although separate, Chinese main land politics are a big influence. Even more so recently as highlighted by all the protests pre “Rona” virus.
 
think thy call that a speed bump in china its a one time use type of thing on the bright side they product billions of extras so once that one is gone there are plenty of others to take its place .
 
AKMarty, you are correct. However, not all rare earth minerals are needed equally and therefore not equally susceptible to China's BS. Its a breakdown that all companies should be doing at the moment: what are they needing? Where can they get it. "Rare earth minerals scarcity" is true, but it is also a boogeyman sometimes. I cant prove it, but I feel like its used to keep us afraid and buying from them and not perceiving the options. Kind of like always being in emergency mode.
 
I can well recall growing up, if one were presented with an item denoted as made in Japan, that would generally connote a product of substandard quality….aside from perhaps cameras?

You're pretty old then. I'm in my mid 50s and by the time I was 12 - 13 I already knew American cars were hot fucking garbage and that Japanese cars were superior in manufacturing quality (if not amenities) to anything made in Europe (Germany included)
 
my body reminds me of that fact every single day.

sure hope to get even older......the pain, not so much

some pretty hot cars came out around 1968-1970 if i recall. Sure had the hots for the Superbird, I would pass a dealer most every day to study at the library (a place that had a lot of books).....something about that monster rear wing....can't forget the COPO models, the Stingray, the Shelbys....they sure turned me on. That said, always like the look of the 1911, the XKE, the Z and especially the XK120 and the Lancia Stratos but the latter 2 were from a different era.
 
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some pretty hot cars came out around 1968-1970 if i recall. Sure had the hots for the Superbird, I would pass a dealer most every day to study at the library (a place that had a lot of books).....something about that monster rear wing....can't forget the COPO models, the Stingray, the Shelbys....they sure turned me on.
They sure looked good but they sounded like rattletraps after a few years. Drive trains were solid but by the mid 70s American cars were a complete joke and the japs and krauts took over.
 
You're pretty old then. I'm in my mid 50s and by the time I was 12 - 13 I already knew American cars were hot fucking garbage and that Japanese cars were superior in manufacturing quality (if not amenities) to anything made in Europe (Germany included)


Most of the cars made today are garbage.

I need a truck. A real life sized one. That eliminates the foreign ones. I'm stuck with 3 to pick from. I picked the one with the best reputation for a long lasting drivetrain. 250k+ miles on 3 of them now, general maintenance and suspension/steering parts wear out. Just fix them and keep on trucking.
 
You have 5 to pick from.


5? Give me a full back seat, 8' box, and the ability to tow 15k lbs. The 8' box eliminates the Japanese brands.

My old boss tried the Japanese trucks. They can't handle the loads we put them through. They're just like every other half-ton, a car with an open trunk.



That's why I buy only Hondas and Toyotas. Half a million miles is not uncommon with them.

Trucks? Couldn't give a fuck less.


I do all my own mechanic work. Last Honda I worked on got sold within a week. Timing belts and water pumps that take 8+ hours to change are nuts.

They are no longer building 90's civics and accords. The newer Japanese stuff isn't nearly as reliable and maintenance free as what they used to build.
 
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Well, their new military gear is top notch shit and they have an attack helicopter better than the Apache...

Civilian tech always follows military tech and as they advance they replace the junk machines with better ones and so on and so on and before you know it, they'll be no different than Japan in quality.
 
You're pretty old then. I'm in my mid 50s and by the time I was 12 - 13 I already knew American cars were hot fucking garbage and that Japanese cars were superior in manufacturing quality (if not amenities) to anything made in Europe (Germany included)

If you held that opinion by 1977-'78 or thereabouts, you were indeed ahead of the curve. Around these parts, I don't think that Japanese cars really took off in popularity in this area until the mid-80s (the Honda Civic, Accord and Toyota pickup truck being largely responsible for that shift in thinking).

Looking back, the Datsun 240Z/260Z/280Z should have put everyone on alert that the Japanese were not fucking around. If we're talking cars in showroom-stock condition, I'd rather have one of those than any American car of the same vintage.

But the more I think about this topic, the stronger I feel that the Chinese aren't going to do the incremental-improvement thing with an evolution of existing products - or even that they will be known for any particular product at all. I think their attempt at dominance is going to be more of a conceptual thing.
 
If you held that opinion by 1977-'78 or thereabouts, you were indeed ahead of the curve. Around these parts, I don't think that Japanese cars really took off in popularity in this area until the mid-80s (the Honda Civic, Accord and Toyota pickup truck being largely responsible for that shift in thinking).

Looking back, the Datsun 240Z/260Z/280Z should have put everyone on alert that the Japanese were not fucking around. If we're talking cars in showroom-stock condition, I'd rather have one of those than any American car of the same vintage.
Understandably since you grew up in Michigan and I in PR. People in PR didn't care who made the car or where since there's no auto industry there. But they could quickly tell a well made car that was easy on gas (not cheap in PR) from a piece of shit that was always breaking down, drank fuel like a sailor drinks beer, and sounded like a rattle can inside after a year.

These three cars started displacing American cars on the roads of PR starting in the late 70s and early 80s
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Seems bring back manufacturing is load of crap

US auto industry downsized by 40+% just in past 5 years , US now makes about as many cars as Brazil(anyon ever seen a Brazilian car) a total non player in world markets .


22664.jpeg


How-Much-Major-Automakers-Make-Every-Single-Second-1200.png
 
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The newer Japanese stuff isn't nearly as reliable and maintenance free as what they used to build.

That is your opinion, and it's highly debatable. I don't have time to debate, but what I do have is industry experience directly with Honda.
 
That is your opinion, and it's highly debatable. I don't have time to debate, but what I do have is industry experience directly with Honda.
I would agree with this regarding Jap designed stuff. Got a Toyota Tacoma that is 5 yrs old and 321,000 miles on it. Runs great. First brake job this last month. Use it for everything and will buy another but no time soon.
 
That is your opinion, and it's highly debatable. I don't have time to debate, but what I do have is industry experience directly with Honda.

I'm not going to get into the usual "they ain't what they used to be" stupidity, but the gap between Toyota/Honda and domestic product certainly is not as large as it used to be (I also have industry experience - not just with Honda, but with many other OEs).
 
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Seems bring back manufacturing is load of crap

US auto industry downsized by 40+% just in past 5 years , US now makes about as many cars as Brazil(anyon ever seen a Brazilian car) a total non player in world markets .


22664.jpeg

While the US did indeed piss away a large amount of auto manufacturing over the past 25 years (thanks NAFTA!), these numbers are not correct and are in fact highly deceptive.

This graphic shows passenger car production, and not total automobile production. The distinction is particularly important in the US since a large proportion of private automobile sales have shifted from passenger cars (what you Euros call A/B/C/D/E/F/S/J segments, per ISO 3833) to crossover vehicles (M segment) and light trucks (what we call Class 1/2/3 or "half ton", "3/4 ton", and "one ton" trucks, without any real analogy in Europe). There are some hairs to be split at the upper end of this size range, since we typically draw a line at 10,000 lbs GVWR (the upper end of Class 2), but there are a small number of Class 3 vehicles sold and used as private vehicles (mostly to Sniper's Hide members). There are also some number of Class 1 and Class 2 vehicles used for commercial purposes, so the lines get blurred a bit. Also note that the same issue exists with reporting sales by manufacturer; Toyota and VW get into a pissing match every few years when they almost tie for 1st place in overall sales and then start arguing about whether vans and small pickups should be included (Toyota thinks they should and VW does not, for what should be obvious reasons).

In reality, automobile production in the US shrunk not by 50% but rather by about 10% over the past five years, largely since overall automotive sales have shrunk by a similar amount. Production last year ran at about 11 million vehicles; this year I'm sure will be much lower, for obvious reasons. Also note that the dollar value of sales in the US has remained relatively constant and that the dollar value of local production has actually increased (we're building fewer vehicles but they are much more expensive).

There is, however, a different story to be told from those charts, and that is the shrinkage of GM from what was once the largest manufacturer in the world to a regional player that can't even compete in every market segment in its home country. This is what happens when executive teams focus on "unlocking shareholder value" instead of building product.
 
Hilarious. Obama did that to GM.

GM did that to GM; its reign as the world leader in automobile production lasted for over 75 years and ended a year before Obama took office. GM lost nearly $70 billion in 2007 and 2008. I'm guessing that was the fault of GW Bush? No, that was Rick Wagoner and the cumulative effects of four decades' worth of shitty management.

Obama did give away Chrysler to the Europeans. That was pretty fucked up.
 
yes they export communism far better than any other country and they do it really well a loud Russian dictator has nothing on the quiet spoken smiling Chinese / Japanese dictators .

 
GM did that to GM; its reign as the world leader in automobile production lasted for over 75 years and ended a year before Obama took office. GM lost nearly $70 billion in 2007 and 2008. I'm guessing that was the fault of GW Bush? No, that was Rick Wagoner and the cumulative effects of four decades' worth of shitty management.

Obama did give away Chrysler to the Europeans. That was pretty fucked up.

Last i remember Detroit went bust and Europeans bought into broke US manufacturers , Chrysler first suitor was Mercedes Benz and now Fiat. Under MB ther resurrected the Brand a bit with new retro designs 300 ,Charger .... and some other models using phased out MB platforms, under Fiat it seems to be doing kinda OK.

In any case European and Japanese automakers all set up factories in US so these make huge chunk of the US manufacturing and most of most US car exports as Detroit does not really have much in terms of model range that could sell well outside the US.

One of the reasons for failure of detroit is lack of competition , that for decades they haven't even tried building cars for the global market, being content with the domestic market. Ford was better off than GM or Chrysler since it always had the Euro branch that made cars for the global market.
 
Last i remember Detroit went bust and Europeans bought into broke US manufacturers , Chrysler first suitor was Mercedes Benz and now Fiat. Under MB ther resurrected the Brand a bit with new retro designs 300 ,Charger .... and some other models using phased out MB platforms, under Fiat it seems to be doing kinda OK.

In any case European and Japanese automakers all set up factories in US so these make huge chunk of the US manufacturing and most of most US car exports as Detroit does not really have much in terms of model range that could sell well outside the US.

One of the reasons for failure of detroit is lack of competition , that for decades they haven't even tried building cars for the global market, being content with the domestic market. Ford was better off than GM or Chrysler since it always had the Euro branch that made cars for the global market.

OK, so you don't see a problem with posting a chart that shows a laughably low US production rate (one that was off by a factor of 5!), but now you're an expert in all the problems with the US auto industry. Cool.

Chrysler already was developing the LX platform (300, Magnum, Charger) before Mercedes took Bob Eaton for a ride. Chrysler did get a really damn good transmission out of the deal, so there's that. Post-merger, it's interesting to look at the source of DaimlerChrysler's cash flows; more was generated from the US than in Europe for several years. What happened after Daimler's divestment is yet another great example of vulture capitalism (before Bob Nardelli helped to ruin Remington, he pretty much ran Chrysler into the ground and then gave it away to the US government in much the same way that I haul the trash can out to the road each week). And then the Obama administration gave away the pieces to Fiat. They did OK after that, but ironically it was by building SUVs and trucks for the US market which according to you is a failed strategy (it put a bunch of money into the pockets of the Agnelli family, so they may not agree with your assessment).

There have been entire books written on this topic that still didn't manage to hit upon all the relevant points (automotive journalist Micheline Manyard's The End Of Detroit is one such example). We certainly aren't going to come close here, despite everyone's attempts to do so with oh-so-clever quips and one-liners.
 
the gap between Toyota/Honda and domestic product certainly is not as large as it used to be
I don't disagree. But the gap's still there and it opens up the longer you keep your car.
 
Last i remember Detroit went bust and Europeans bought into broke US manufacturers , Chrysler first suitor was Mercedes Benz and now Fiat. Under MB ther resurrected the Brand a bit with new retro designs 300 ,Charger .... and some other models using phased out MB platforms, under Fiat it seems to be doing kinda OK.

In any case European and Japanese automakers all set up factories in US so these make huge chunk of the US manufacturing and most of most US car exports as Detroit does not really have much in terms of model range that could sell well outside the US.

One of the reasons for failure of detroit is lack of competition , that for decades they haven't even tried building cars for the global market, being content with the domestic market. Ford was better off than GM or Chrysler since it always had the Euro branch that made cars for the global market.
Jesus H Christ on a cracker...…..would you just shut the fuck up already about an industry you simply don't know anything about?

Some of us here either work or have worked many years in it. It's mostly the ones telling you that you don't know your asshole from a hole in the ground when it comes to this topic.
 
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Yes i checked its skipping the light duty vehicles .

Focus on Trucks is a failed strategy as production numbers for Detroit , including trucks dropped by a couple of million in a decade while other manufacturers increased thier output by similar and world market grew from 60 to 72mio vehicles , SUVs are more exportable but not all models ( US largest exporter being BMW is telling enough, US plants for Euro manufacturers make over 3 million cars in the United States, accounting for 27+% of total US production. ). Trucks only really export to ME are incompatible with other markets.

If only Tesla was not such a fraud it could be one of the new Giants but will likely never be one, as big manufacturers are already catching up and they actually know how to make cars . In Europe Tesla is rapidly losing market share as local manufacturers surpass it , in Germany it droped from 17.8 % share to 8+% in a year as VW ,Renault,Nissan,Mercedes over took it Tesla is now tied for 5th place on EV market with BMW and it will only get worse as others ramp up their EVs

ME export :devilish: , there is certainly no Euro or Japanese truck that could make such and entrance.
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