Egyptians and Chinese products

[DJKeefy]

The market now seems to be flooded with Chinese products, its quite hard to get anything these days that has not been made in China. Every Egyptian I speak to always seem to dislike anything made in China, they say the stuff is rubbish, most of the souvenirs that tourists buy are now made in China. My race motorbike is made in China and is 4 years old and still looks like new, Egyptians love my motorbike and cant believe its Chinese made. The only problem I have had with chinese made stuff is with the kettles, I have had 3 in 1 year

What do you think about Chinese products ?

[HEPZIBAH]

The market now seems to be flooded with Chinese products, its quite hard to get anything these days that has not been made in China.
.....
The only problem I have had with chinese made stuff is with the kettles, I have had 3 in 1 year

What do you think about Chinese products ?

That pretty much describes the UK too.

I know that in the UK we are supposed to get the 1st Class products from China whilst, according to Egyptian friends, in Egypt you only get the 4th class or lower, but there is often still quite a lot left to be desired with what we buy here. I find Kettles and Toasters in particular don't last anything like as long as they should. My own kettle at home I've had for years and it has served me well and still in good condition (can't remember what make it is or where it's from though), but I have given up on buying middle price to expensive ones for the office as the either don't work as well or don't last as long. I now only buy the 'better' ones when they are on special price or stick to cheap and cheerful - I'm going to have to replace fairly regularly whichever option!

[Ruby Slippers]

Couldn't agree with you more, Hepzi!

[HEPZIBAH]

Couldn't agree with you more, Hepzi!

Good! I don't have that 'Is it me???' feeling anymore.

[Morgita]

A couple of years ago I replaced my dishwasher, mainly because the old one was by now very tatty looking and a bit of an eyesore after kitchen renovations . It still worked but after twenty years I thought it was time for a new one. The new one is cold fill only,no idea why, it doesn't wash or dry the dishes as well as my old one did. Apparently, it's all to do with energy efficiency said the repair man when it needed repair in it's first year. The newer ones are more energy efficient but less effective. When I was equipping my offspring with all the necessities for student living I bought all the white goods from the Tesco value range and they lasted at least as well as much more expensive goods. The old saying that you get what you pay for just doesn't hold true anymore.

[Horus]

I reckon that the Chinese goods are very much like the old style Japanese products used to be, in other words they just made a copy, so they often didn’t really know what they were producing. But like the Japanese they will get better and start to infiltrate the higher end of the market as they start to understand it better and improve their goods to match. Lots of high tech stuff like cameras and ipods are already produced in their factories, but it will not be long before we start to see home grown Chinese products that can match these branded products.

Japan started making a laughable little moped called the Honda 50 back in the 60’s and at that time I was riding about on famous British built motorbikes such as BSA’s, Norton’s, Triumphs & Matchless to name but a few. Then slowly but surely the Japanese bikes equalled and then excelled the British bikes for quality, speed and reliability, the result is that today we have no real British bikes anymore other than a couple of resurrected marques catering for us nostalgia fans.

I have noticed the same thing with photography equipment, most well known Japanese manufacturers who out innovated the established bigger European & American companies now outsource to China, Indonesia and other Pacific rim countries, so what goes around comes around. I recently purchased a Chinese companies own product Speedlite (flashgun) for my camera and it was a third the price of a similar one from say Cannon. It looks the same, the build quality is very good and so far it is as reliable, but what is most impressive is that within a few months of producing these Speedlites, the company had put out a Mk2 version (which I bought) that addressed all the known issues that people disliked about the Mk1 and it hardly cost a fiver more, but was twice as good value wise.

I think that the biggest problem at the moment for Egypt is that they need cheap goods and that is exactly what they are being sold, very cheaply manufactured consumer goods. Whereas we know what the expensive goods are like quality wise and expect that any Chinese copy will also be of good quality, but will cost us a lot less to buy and as there are also far more manufacturers competing for our custom, then they have had to up the quality of their goods sold here.

[Goddess]

We did used to get the lower class of Chinese goods over here; but we were told it all changed sometime last year, maybe about July? All Chinese cheap goods vanished for a while as a new certification had to be met and so all new stock had to be brought in that carried the cert numbers. Don't know if that was true, but it's what we were told when we were hunting for one of those cheap ceiling fans last year and we were told the same story in about 5 different shops.

[LovelyLadyLux]

When I first starting going to Trinidad there was no Chinese influence at all. In approximately the last 5 years Chinese people have flowed into Trinidad and the markets have been flooded with really cheap inferior goods out of China particularly kitchen ware, gadgets, utensils, electronics......

I wouldn't mind so much except that you pay top dollar for this less than adequate "stuff." The average person in Trinidad makes $1 to $1.50/hour US. A cheap hand operated (and I do mean disgustingly cheap hand cranked hand mixer) will sell for $12US.......

On Ebay there is a really noticeable increase in goods coming into the USA from China. Almost always there is no shipping cost and the prices are more than cheap.