To play devil's advocate, when someone says "Chinese made" they're usually well aware of your point, and are more using it as a common way to describe product mills spitting out countless devices with dubious quality or configuration.

Of course theres good products made in China, and plenty of entirely Chinese brands killing it doing their thing.

This isn't about state actors though. There's a world of difference between a name brand (possibly even a Chinese one) versus what I would term "chineseum". It's nothing to do with China per se and everything to do with purchasing from the extreme low end of the market. It just so happens that the vast majority of that segment is manufactured in China at present.

I think normally when people say Chinese made in this way, what they're really communicating is that there's no (meaningful) brand. All they know about it is that it is from China.

Made in China and random Chinese brands are two very different things

> To be fair, everything is Chinese made

Yes. Chinese manufacturing is quite a phenomenon, useful and everywhere

But to be completely fair, a $40 video projector has a warning label. The price