China quality... is it in the genes?

No this post doesn't have anything to do with the recent milk saga. Might as well take this opportunity to share my $0.02: Although the milk products are from China, most of the brands are from overseas, and with a brand from New Zealand being caught in the act too only proved my suspicion:

It's not just the Chinese that put in the Melamine, but the ang mohs (Westerners) that ordered them to do so. I mean, come'on, it's the boss that decides what ingredients to put in their food product, and they selected China because of her not-so-stringent checks. So now who's at fault? You decide.

Back on topic, I've recently realized that while Chinese products are usually worth the money with a lot of quality for the price, they do not perform the maximum that they should, plagued by design problems. Kinda wasted. It's not that they do not put in effort or quality; their products show a lot of quality and effort, but somehow, there will be something wrong and it just wouldn't perform.

For example, the Zhaolu 2.5A DAC that I own, there are problems with the circuitary design - using the thermal viaducts as ground path, haveing 25.5V across a 25V capacitor etc. The Yulong T-Amp, which I current have two, have a whining problem from either improper grounding (again) or shielding, I'm going to check that out.

And the thing that led me to think this way is the Chinese Anime fansubs. They can be bigger in filesize compared to their English counterparts, but still be of worse quality.

(To people who believe filesize equates quality, I'll tell you that, no it does not. Not to the full extent. Encoding is an art and requires skill, especially video. A properly-encoded video can have more than 2x the compression ratio than a poorly-encoded one i.e. for the same quality, the properly-encoded video is less than half the size of the poorly encoded one. I believe myself to be reasonably good at choosing the right encoders and settings, more so than the "professionals" out there. Needless to say, those all-in-one simple encoders all suck.)

However, I can't say that they never put in the effort. They used higher bitrates knowing it will give better quality, and have a RealMedia version for those who need smaller filesizes too. Also, this is a fan job, by fans for fans, it'd only be natural if they put in their best efforts. In fact, effort-wise they have a lot, as they do a lot of series that the English do not.

So it's just their skills?

Probably.

So, good quality, good effort, but poor skills, outcome is less-than-perfect.

A bit wasted don't u think?