[nostromo]

China has a “caveat emptor” culture that I suspect plays a role in this.

In most western countries and other countries, like Japan, selling counterfeit or barely functional products is seen as somewhat shameful. But in China it’s often seen as being clever or cunning.

Chinese consumers are used to this and are very cautious about what they buy and from whom, and of course negotiating a reasonable cost for the goods being sold.

In the US and most of the west, consumers feel entitled to a basic standard of quality, even at the lowest prices.

This leads to consumers being confused in the west when they buy very cheap goods from China and the quality is crap. Well, yeah, you got what you paid for.

[eru]

This discrepancy is not necessarily a bad thing. It's basically how western companies why manufacture in China can add value, by doing that kind of quality control and building a reputation.

(Of course, Chinese companies can do the same when they sell to foreigners.)

[collegeburner]

yea i've seen the attitude extend to college here, we generally have some idea that cheating is wrong but most of the chinese students i met seemed to think it was fine if they could get away with it.

[VectorLock]

My SO is a professor at a university with a lot of foreign students and she mostly only has to deal with cheating with this cohort of students.

[Teever]

It's not that it's seen as merely shameful in other countries, it's that it's seen as fraudulent and illegal.

Trying to play fraud off as a cultural difference and misunderstanding is frankly bullshit victim blaming.

[londons_explore]

'barely functional' isn't fraud. And in most cases the cheapest made in china product is barely functional.

It's only deliberately selling nonfunctional products that would meet the definition of fraud.

[granshaw]

Plus selling barely functional products under a DONGJOY etc brand isn’t fraud, only trying to sell a counterfeit Prada bag under the Prada brand is (and only in Western countries at that)

[ungamedplayer]

No matter what it says on the tag , if it looks like Prada but it isn't from Prada, someone is getting frauded

[eru]

What do you mean?

For example, if I knowingly buy a knock-off, nobody is being defrauded.

(You can claim that Prada as a company gets damaged in the process somehow, that's probably fair. But it's not fraud.)

[Teever]

There are whole industries where it's unacceptable to ship 'barely functional' products -- aeronautics for instance.

We should be striving to expand this to more industries not the other way around.

[eru]

Different standards for different contexts.

Not everyone shares your preferences.

[Teever]

If you're selling something to someone who has a reasonable expectation that it is of a specific level of quality and it's not and you don't tell them that, it's fraud.

[solarkraft]

Whether you're angry about this depends on which culture you subscribe to.

[wyclif]

I dunno, I think just about any person would be angry if the Chinese-made electric clippers they just plugged into a wall outlet exploded in their hand.