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Posted: 3/28/2008 4:02:03 AM EDT
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This is my dissertation on Chinese made optics, or Chinese made anything for that matter. In my business, I have occasion to work with "Far East" sourced goods every day. They run the gamut of material types from plastics, acrylics, metal, melamine, press board, etc. I have had the fortune / misfortune to travel to that country to see manufacturing concerns. From my perspective, there has been evolution. The evolution is this... A long time ago, the majority of our "cheap shit" import market was Taiwan. Then Japan cornered the cheap shit market. Eventually, the Philippines chimed in with a small but viable "cheap shit" import market. Remember back in 1987 (for you guys old enough to do so) about how 'everybody' would complain about cheap Japanese shit? Now, 20 some years later, Japanese shit is generally regarded as well made. They went through the learning curve, figured out what sells, figured out what Western buyers looked for, improved their QC, and thrived. The Chinese (...and Koreans, and Filipinos) are each somewhere along the path of this same learning curve. The only difference that I have personally seen from going into the factories is...YOU CANNOT TRUST THE CHINESE. If you don't have a full time person or contingency living there, in the shop every day - day in and day out- who speaks the dialect and is familiar with the customs and international business....you WILL get fucked / short changed along the way. This person / persons must be unflappable, have impeccable credit, be compensated almost too well, and be loyal to a fault. The Chinese will try to bribe them. The Chinese will cheat. Chinese management and ownership of the manufacturing concerns have ZERO regard for their labor force. If you will pay for their kids' college tuition in a Western University, they'll be more than happy to whack a few of their folks if that's what makes you happy enough to write the check. This is real life. This is how it goes down. Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan are limited only by available land mass, natural resources, and energy. Generally speaking, people in these countries are not thought of as disposable and enjoy a good (but very, very different) quality of life. China is very, very different. I'm a guy who believes that outsourcing the manufacturing of certain goods increases the quality of life here. And I'm here to tell you first hand, that China is very, very different. |
It was in reponse to the rash of "Chinese This" and "Chinese That" threads and discussions within threads ( Vortex ). It became glaringly obvious that there was a deficit of first hand observations regarding far east manufacturing, so I thought I'd offer up my perspective. If you didn't get it or didn't find it useful, please accept my apologies. I was merely trying to reinforce the linear equation of (what you get) = (what you pay for). |
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I'm with you, Brother! I work for Swift, and back when we were a much larger company, with both microscopes and the normal consumer sports optics, I too dealt with the Chinese over microscopes. Wow! I will say there is a huge difference between a privately owned company and a government owned or backed company. One of the best, perhaps even the best Chinese company I got to deal with is called Domilight (privately owned.) There parts are not just good quality, but high quality. But, this is the exception. Many times did I just get frustrated of the excuses and either sent back the bulk of a production run or waited for people from the factory to come out and fix all their mistakes. For riflescopes it's way more difficult. First it's a military product, so you can only use PLA factories. Nobody private touches the things (at least that I know of.) Do proprietary stuff is not a real consideration as Leupold has found out. I will say say this, of all the people from all the front companies I have met, there is actually on one guy I actually trust to say what he means and means what he says. This is a shout out to Wu Zai Jun! This whole thing reminded me of a previous job I had and dealing with Chinese products: steel pipe. When they changed the law in '96 and no one here could afford to zinc oxide anything, most of it moved to China. I have never seen crappier steel in all my life. Brittle, gritty, it was like the Great Leap Forward again, and all this pipe was coming from people's back yard foundries to a plumbing supply house near you. Great, now I need a drink! |
see this every day, people opt for the "cheaper" aftermarket rotor over a motorcraft(ford) rotor, anger in 2 days because they warped again, then the manufactor doesn't want to pay the technician for doing the job over and over. buy quality, buy once. i'm sure the chi-coms are coming around, i still try my best to reseach products i buy and buy from the USA or a free country, i can't tell you how mad i was when my Millet came in and had a "made in china" sticker on it, oh well live and learn 
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this is all i need to know about chinese made optics... LINK china reverse engineers everything we make including military weapon systems... which really fucking irritates me... many people on here claim that this OKAY since it is CHEAPER because american companies are such a RIPOFF... (we even have mods that would spite an industry partner for no reason other than he believes that their prices are too high...  )we even see people claiming that if something has a 30mm tube and a red dot in it that it's the SAME as the REAL THING... even in the thread the OP links to about vortex we got some guy saying how he feels scammed for buying an AIMPOINT instead of the strikedot because they are the SAME or some such bullshit... i get so sick of all the garbage accessories and everyone claiming how great they are... i am big fan of when airsoft garbage like UTG is claimed to be just as "solid" and "well made" as products like Larue Tactical or KAC... it is IMPOSSIBLE to argue with people with this mentality, so i'll let them live their lives buying "good enough" and pretending that cheap == good, and continue buying quality products for myself... |
c'mon, seriously, everybody knows that these are made for airsoft, the manufacturer's are not pretending that they're for real steel. I have 2 clones and an M2. Are the clones as good. No. But neither clone has lost zero on either my ak pistol or any of my ARs, so are they worth $40 each for arseing around at the range ? Yep. China have first rate engineers, and they can make very high quality products. But you do have to pay for it. If you don't give a f%^$ and don't want to pay then they will make you shit products. Even if your computer, TV, stereo, Ipod, broadband router are not made in China, a good number of the sub assemblies and components will be. If you own an Apple product (consistently rated #1 in reliability- ref "consumer reports") it will be made in China. About 85% of soft products and 70% of hard goods sold through Wal Mart and Target are made in China. The remainder come from Vietnam, clothes mostly, Taiwan and Korea, the electrical stuff. If you were willing to pay for a chinese company to make a good water proof, electrical-tape-free red dot sight, they'd do it. It just would cost a fair bit more than $40... |
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+1. Also, not all Chinese companies rip off other people's designs. There are actually good engineers and manufacturers making good designs from scratch over there, but you have to be willing to pay, as asiparks says, just like in America. Not everyone in America designs and manufactures like LaRue - there are ripoff artists and scammmers plenty here - and it only seems reasonable that there's a bunch of Chinese LaRue equivalents in a country of 1.3B people rushing headlong towards capitalism. |
Did you forget the recent and past toy and lead combos, that has been an ongoing problem for years. What about the dog food incident? We have real standards here in the USA unlike CHINA, our standards include morales and ethics. I agree not every US company is up to par with LaRue. LaRue is very high quality and others are just as good or they are low to poor quality but they also cost far less. This thread is really about FAKEPOINTS sold on Ebay. It's buyer beware on ebay, all kinds of ripoffs going on. My co-worker lost $330 on a EoTech that never was. If AIMPOINT would be more agressive say like Rolex is and go after the importers and consignees and register there trade mark with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, you would see alot less counterfiet AIMPOINTS. For anyone who belives China has great engineers, are you gonna be first in line to buy the lastest China mobile when it hits your local dealership? I've seen some of the crash test so far, just like a soda car run over by a car. Get real folks, nothing original comes out of China, it's always someelse design thats been stolen or copied. Since when has "Made In China" meant you just picked up some high quality?... |
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I will not buy Chinese tools...guns and optics are tools, NOT TOYS. A tool is something you depend on to work when you need it most. Anyone that buys Chinese anything for their guns are just playing with toys. I went to a gun show yesterday, one table full of Chinese optics stacked high, seller was sleeping because nobody went near his crap. That made me happy. |
When I was a kid(i'm 54) it was the JAPS could not make anything of their own, but they were good a coping things. Look at Toyota, and Honda now. I also remember when Japan was buying up US land, and everybody was complaining about than, like they were going to dig it up and take it home..... China is just now becomming a international player, and is having it's teething pains. |
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