This was often unfair and incorrect even then, but it's clearly mad now. Chinese products run the gamut from the lowest to the highest ends in almost every consumer field. But some people hew to old stereotypes.
Now I feel old - get off my lawn.
I just wish we still did too.
The US manufactures more than it ever did - but the number of people working to manufacture stuff is way down (while population is way up), and so few people have visibility into what is being made. There is a lot of cool stuff made in the US. Whatever country you live in likely has a similar story.
For a concrete example, we get very good rice varieties specifically from certain parts of China. (But here in Singapore people also really care about rice. You generally can't buy good and fresh rice in the middle of the Polish countryside for example.) And, yes, for this product the 'Chinese' variety is superior to eg generic Thai rice.
I put 'Chinese' in scare-quotes, because just like you don't just drink 'French wine' when you know what you are doing, you don't just eat 'Chinese' rice.
For a lot of tea drinking paraphernalia, the most top of the line items also come from China. Even if you are into, say, Japanese tea.
I wasn't thinking of agricultural products, but rather anything manufactured. As an example, appliances made in Germany will have a cord long enough that you can actually plug into the wall, while the one that's made in China will have a useless 10-centimeter cord that would force me to use an extension.
Your mileage might vary, this is just my experience, but it's been pretty consistent for a few decades, with things going downhill in the past I'd say 5 years or so.
I've recently had kids, and I'm actually impressed at how much toys have improved in quality since I was a kid growing up in Germany. And, yes, most of these new toys come from China etc. By and large, they seem to be sturdier and last a lot longer, and are cheaper, too.
I'm especially impressed by the light-up shoes we bought. I guess you can blame that on general improvements in LEDs and battery technology in that specific case, maybe.
For what it's worth, I now live in Singapore, and we are very open on trade, so as a consumer you benefit from especially brutal competition.
Transport shouldn't really be worse: once you put anything on a container ship, it doesn't really matter much how long the ride is. But imports could be more annoying in other ways.
We do have a lot more people speaking Chinese here (around 3/4 of the population are ethnically Chinese after all) and lots of personal contacts, so we get a lot of people running small import businesses getting in Chinese stuff.
Of course, there's still plenty of low quality stuff you can buy. But I see that as a benefit: it's good to have the choice available, if you want to take it.
You get quality from competition and customers opening their wallets for quality.
Another example: Apple assembles some nice consumer hardware in China. Their quality doesn't depend on regulation.
If not, I usually just don't buy it new and just go to the thrift store. I can usually find what I need, made 30 years ago that will probably last me for the rest of my life.
I don't have a Twitter account.
I don't buy anything that has "smart" features, either. For instance, appliances that come with an app I just immediately skip.
That might be why I'm not seeing all this superb quality.
What's your point?
"premium" ? No they've had to lower their prices because otherwise you would never even look at them in the first place (or they don't get a livable amount of work, even if you personally do pay like you say).
And the drop in prices has to come from somewhere. Quality is by far the easiest thing to skimp on.