I've never visited China, but would like to at some point. An opportunity or reason to go there has never presented itself. I only mention this because I detect from your last sentence you consider yourself as being aloof due to dealing extensively in Chinese products.
That aside, I'm aware of China's manufacturing capability, my brother in law designs multi axis machine centres which he now manufactures in China. Chinese manufacturers are the only customer of his products, which is a good indication of where we are.
The culture that we have fallen into in this country, where unimaginative individuals essentially act as spivs at the dockyard flogging Chinese goods that the majority of people don't need. These people are hoovering up this stuff with borrowed money. It can only end in pain and disaster.
No,my policy is to buy the best value at the best price,that doesn't necessarily mean the cheapest,my Blackline tools range is not Snap-on,nor is it supermarket quality,a good quality product at a mid range price.
I buy from the UK when that produces the right product and actually am bringing back a lot of work back to the UK,but UK companies want horrendous money for tooling production,tool makers always strike me as the most expensive UK discipline.
Those machining centres used to be Italian but now seem to be Taiwanese or South Korean.
The cheapest product is now being sold on e-bay,these guys give the impression that they are UK businesses,sometimes they have a UK vat number and UK address. But when you check the vat No and the address it often does not exist.
They ship as much stuff as they can cram into a 40 foot container,delivered to a fulfilment warehouse in the UK,under declare the value by 90%,thereby defrauding our customs of vat and duty.
Then they sell the product on e-bay,saying they issue a vat invoice,but usually don't ,thereby defrauding our HMRC of the vat. Most Brit customers don't care because the goods are very cheap without the vat.
HMRC seem powerless to stop this trade,I don't think they have the power to look inside the accounts of e-bay. The rest of Europe has a team called Snake to stop this,we played with Snake for a month but decided UK law wouldn't allow us to take action....the EU want £2 billion because our weakness at stopping this illegal trade is costing the EU,the U.K. Is seen as the weak link into Europe.
KudosDave