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We are happy with our Miele appliances (washing machine, dryer, dish washer.) But we also have plenty of Chinese stuff that works well.

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.

by altern822 hours ago|

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Could also be that if you're in Singapore you get better stuff. It's possible that European companies pick crappy, cheaper products that they have a higher margin on to cover importing and transport. I have no idea.

by eru4 hours ago|

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It might be possible, I don't know. Singapore is a fairly small market, so we don't really get any bespoke stuff.

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.