While the social conditions are deplorable in a lot of these factories, I have seen first hand how quality can vary wildly...even within the same plant. There really is no sense of "pride in your work" in a lot of these assembly factories and there is a systemic and rampant corruption issue country-wide.

And for any of you that have actually lived and worked in China for any length of time (as I have), you'll note that Chinese workers get an almost gleeful feeling from sticking it to the man (ESPECIALLY if "the man" is a foreign boss/company...double secret bonus points if the man is of Japanese origin).

Real life example:

A global brand name (perhaps named after a particular fruit) engages with a company in China to assemble a particular electronic gadget. They are allowed to choose local subcomponent suppliers (say....capacitors) by themselves as long as those components meet specific test criteria. Component manufacturer X sends their sales guy to the plant manager where the gadgets are assembled. He tells the plant manager that due to some "mishap" they can't meet either the price or volume requirements of a particular part, but they've got some "B stock" that will pass the requisite tests (because the tests are rigged). The change will actually result in a savings of 10 cents per device. The sales guy says:

"Tell you what, we'll bill Orange.com the original price. After they pay, our company and YOU PERSONALLY will split the difference. We'll send the proceeds to a foreign bank account of your choice."

The plant manager agrees because he wants to send his kids to school in Canada and that's...well...expensive.

9 months later, Orange.com starts noticing an excessive failure rate on a particular device. After a long investigation (long because the plant manager thwarts it at every opportunity) it is determined that capacitors from a specific supplier have a substantially higher failure rate than expected. Orange.com contacts the authorities. After a flurry of phone calls, orange.com realizes that both the salesman at the supplier and the plant manager seem to have relatives in high places (cuz kickbacks in China have a way of flowing uphill post haste). They are told that this would cause their province to lose face to global manufacturers. Unless they want their expansion plans for their assembly facility to be unexpectedly delayed, they should just fire the plant manager and forget about the whole thing. Meanwhile, they get to eat the costs of any returns during the warranty period. Failures outside of warranty are eaten by the hapless consumer.

I have seen similar things happen a number of times in China, first hand. I don't mean to imply that it is impossible to get quality goods from China as that is clearly not true, but it is very difficult to ensure consistent quality even if you're a "big fish" in the global economy. This fact combined with the stomach churning (for me, at least) policies of the Chinese government have brought me to the place that I'm at now...I avoid Chinese products when I can.

Best,