China (not so much Taiwan) has a long, long way to go in quality. Their metallurgy sucks. As with purses , tires etc etc they are good at knock offs in appearance. Korea seems to be catching Japan, but China must come out of the cottage industry in many things to compete. Anyway I would expect most consumer items to contain some questionable parts. I do shop at H Frt, but carefully. You can scratch a lot of H Frt's "hardened parts" with a pen knife.
It is not China it is greedy Americans , Greedy Australians etc.
China can make products far far superior to anything coming out of any factory in the good ol USA only problem is they cost almost as much.
It is the immoral AMERICAN wholesale buyers who go there looking for the cheapest product that can find then place a larger order demanding a cheaper yet price then flog them off to American idiots who believe the magic pudding is real, make massive profits buy another block of units in Florida then go over to China and buy a second load demanding an even cheaper still price.( Insert Aust for American & Gold Cosast for Florida for local story)
A group of us get obsolete wiring looms made in China because we can no longer buy the parts to make them locally.
We have been doing this for a long time ( 12 years ).
The factory manager says we are the only customer from outside China that does not demand repeat orders be supplied for a cheaper price every time.
We actually pay more for each repeat order on the condition that the quality remains the same or improves.
China spends more on Metallurgical research than the rest of the world combined I know this because I am ( or was ) a metallurgist and still subscribe to a lot of trade journals.
The new integrated iron & Steel plant due to be commissioned in 2016 /2017 will have a larger out put than the entire USA steel production and will bankrupt the USA steel industry which will not be able to compete .
They have already bankrupted the Australian iron industry we closed down our last blast furnace two years ago and Australia had the cheapest pig iron in the world prior to that.
China is also building the largest integrated aluminium plant in the world and one of only 2 which will be fully integrated and the only one with in line foundry as well as billet / pig plant.
When that is completed it will bankrupt every aluminium plant world wide.
They can do this because flag saluting patriotic companies in Amercis, Australia , UK , France , Germany etc etc scour the world for the lowest input prices in order to make the highest profits for their shareholders.
China is using the West's greed to bring the West down much the same as the US used the Soviets parranoia to bankrupt Russia.
Sorry to get all political but I do have friends who have gone to work for Chineese companies.
They only make garbage because we buy garbage because we are too greedy to pay a fair price for quality products.
