Deserved or not, when I hear "Made In China" I automatically assume it is of inferior quality.  I wouldn't own a Chinese scooter just for that reason.  I have been eying the BMW G 650 GS as a decent little adventure tourer but something about the Made In China engine doesn't sit right with me.  Opinions??

-Jessie

These are the same people who put melamine-formaldehyde resin in baby milk to make it appear 'more nutritious'

Think of all the poor innocent pet cats and dogs that died of kidney failure from the Made in China pet food ingredients not too long ago. There is also a joke about the olympic gold medals that are now made in China, prompting the warning to winners not to kiss the medals due to the high levels of lead they contain.


Those who think China will soon be ahead of the US in every respect may not be aware that the entire country is choking to death on it's unbridled air pollution and wallowing in countless billions of tons of garbage, trash, and human/animal waste that they don't know what to do with. They dump it in the neighborhoods, on the streets, waterways, and on any convenient piece of land they can find-----give it a few more years and they won't have to worry about overpopulation.

What do I think when I hear "made in China"...

They are currently going through what Japan went through ages ago, when the words "Made In Japan" meant "inferior".

Chinese made foodstuffs... forget about it. Their quality control is highly questionable.
Chinese made toys... again poor QC what with lead based paint in childs and babies toys, etc.
Chinese made goods of various description... lack of QC means shoddy products with questionable ingredients.

But Vehicles... ahh, this is an interesting one.

Triumphs are made in Thailand. Maybe buyers know, maybe they don't. Spain makes the GS500 According To the Suzuki Specs and you can be sure Suzuki keeps an eye on the QC to maintain the bikes to a Standard.

Down here, we have some Chinese Versions of Australian Built, Japanese built and German Built cranes. And the Chinese versions are all sh!t. And only the small companies who don't really need a serious crane (small machine shop, shed building company, etc.) buy them - much to the dismay of the operators employed to operate them. For instance...

A couple months back there was an horrific crane crash where an Australian made "Franna Crane" rolled a couple of times at speed and the driver died (it is suspected the driver had a heart attack while driving on the road at 50mph). I snapped a photo of this crane after driving by the yard of the company that is going to fix it. I walked in and asked if I could take a photo and they said yes. Apart from exhaust damage, missing center pin and some other similar roll over at speed signs, the crane is not too bad condition.

A truck driver I was working with told me he had photos of the Chinese one that had rolled over on site (word had spread around the construction industry of the rollover but shiny-bums had made a large effort to keep it hush and forbid photos or footage) - it was moving very slow with a load and just rolled over onto its side. In the photos taken surreptitiously by the truck driver the crane's roof was peeled open, the controlling and steering rams were all bent and fubar and it was an utter mess. Yet all it did was fall on its side. An indication their Roll Over Protection System was poor and their build standards lower.

On the flip side we have a car brand called The Great Wall. Marketed as China's Car. What people do not know is, this Great Wall is just a Brand of Hyundai who also, unbeknownst to most, owns KIA cars. This means, you are getting a Korean owned car made to the Korean specs and QC, but made in China. So the quality is quite good.

Summary: The stuff made in China to the QC standards of foreign companies is ok. The Chinese created companies knocking off other products to compete is not so good at the moment, but is likely to get better, though should be avoided in the meantime.

Michael

I agree with mister, but you do get that awkward feeling when the tag on your Australian flag says "made in china" lol.

hell our american flags are. chinese standup scooters have made me ALOT of money at tiems. as well as teh motorcycles. they break. often.

Means it was made in china .



Most of the time I'm highly skeptical of anything from a country like China. They are just beginning to enter the better half of the industrial age and their standards are on par currently with where most of the first world was 40 years ago or later. As such, their quality control and manufacturing material is variable at best and using a product from them involves some sort of gamble.

Example -

Harbor Freight is a store here that sells off-brand Chinese knock offs of high end tools. My father bought a compressor tube from them and it broke essentially the next day. It even smelled of uncured rubber. Where is the benefit in these tools? They're one-offs. Need an impact hammer but can't afford to pay 200 bucks for a product you'll use maybe twice? Get a harbor freight knock off for a quarter of the cost. That being said I work in a place where I get tools at cost - so I have no need to ever shop under name-brand .

American flags are all manufactured in China. There isn't a single corporation that sells goods that doesn't export some degree of labor to China. It's cheap, unregulated, and they get the work done in twice the time for 1/8th the pay. No unions or labor commissions involved. As an aside - I wish they'd put a HUGE tariff on goods imported from China. There's a good amount of unemployed Americans that would be more than happy to do the work while the economy remains in the tank.



I would not bet my life on anything of Chinese manufacturing at this point. If I found out the engine of anything I drove was manufactured in China I'd probably sell it as quickly as I possibly could. I have NEVER had an automotive product made in China last. EVER. period.

I am one of the generation that remembers "Made in Japan" is being iffy but that changed a lot between the 1950s and the 70s, The Germans put "Foreign" on stuff up to the early-mid 1950s but both soon became a mark of quality, well generally.

I find it difficult to believe that the same will happen with "Made in China" but you never know hmmmmmm

I like the earlier points about the internal mechanics and politics of China. For sure China is or will soon be the premier manufacturing nation and since the industrial revolution the big manufacturer has been the big world power, first Britain with Germany and France close by and then latterly the USA.

Will China follow on? I rather think that the Political issues will eventually overtake them and perhaps we will see an "oriental spring" once the middle classes get used to the novelty of getting rich they will probably yearn for more freedom which could lead first to a collapse like the old USSR breaking down into several countries or autonomous regions before reinventing itself as a democratic capitalist society, maybe then, who knows......... It will be an interesting future.

By the time chinese stuff is of japanese quality, it will cost more than the japanese stuff. To get better stuff out, you need better skilled labor making it, and oddly, skilled labor is needed around the world. I dont see people with expertise working for McWages even in china. Agreed the ycan live fine on a few dollars a day, say $20-30, but currently they are working for under $1.
Cool.
Buddha.

Working in the tool business, I see 'made in china' regularly.  Some of it is decent and some of it is not.  Vehicles, such as scooters, and I have had two of the the cfmoto versions, are okay but both of them were obviously inferior to japanese bikes.  The 250 I had was wrecked and submerged in a flood.  I got it running/rejuvenated afterwards but the fasteners, brackets and the metal itself was clearly cheap quality.  Taking it all apart and going through its problems gave me a close look at why they cost much less.  The little chinese scooter I have is about the same.  With that I wouldn't want to depend on any chinese made vehicle as my sole ride.

Here in Europe, Made in China equals Made in DDR (former East Germany), and that stands for cheap, low quality.
There's a saying: I'm not that rich to buy cheap stuff.
And there's a good reason for that.
Buying cheap chinese tools, electronics or something, often cost me more in a long run.

I bought some chinese mirrors for my GS on eBay... Crap.
I bought chinese speedo-tach gauges for my GS... Total crap.
I bought chinese USB reader for my Mazda stereo... Well, it's kinda working, but not as expected or advertised. Etc, etc...

So... No more chinese crap for me. Ever. Ever. Ever.
I'd rather save the money and buy something more expensive, but worth the value.

So back to the original question, would you trust a BMW motorcycle that has it's engine made in China??

-Jessie

It can mean different things.
Generally, you get all this for only $9.95 and if you act in the next 10 minutes, we'll double your order!
Yep - lots of cheap late night TV crap. I can't imagine how they sell that crap and when you figure in the shipping to Seattle, Tacoma, Portland or LA from China, the stuff must be made for one or two cents.
Like others say - if I want a tool I'll use once then have to throw away - made in China. If I depend on the tool - doesn't mater where made as long as high standards with full warranty. I don't care where Craftsman makes their stuff because where ever it is made - it has high standards. I have a Montgomery Wards metric set at least 30 years old that still holds up. Some Craftsman stuff I know is 50 years old.

Tools we can know what we're getting.

I worry more about all the chemicals in our domestic food supply. When the pesticide revolution started in the 60's and growth additives in the 70's, we started killing ourselves. Never have I seen so many fat children. Its not the corn syrup. Its the growth hormones in the food. A little won't kill you. But that little over 10 years will make you gain 10 to 20 pounds you can't get rid of. The antibiotic resistant bugs: antibiotics are added to cattle food "as a precaution" and it also acts as a growth hormone. Animals get to market faster while antibiotic resistant strains of ecoli and other things are evolving. Not a fanatic on what I buy, I try to buy local with no hormones or antibiotics. When I travel to Germany, I don't see all the fat people. Then Europe doesn't allow all those chemicals in the food supply. By German law, beer is grain, hops, yeast, water and sugar. They can't add all the unknown chemicals that gets into out domestic beers. No preservatives so it can sit out in front of a quicky-mart in the sun.

I grew up with lead paint and asbestos insulation on steam pipes in the school. Never a problem for us. With all the new chemicals we have in our food and products (that "new car smell" is chemicals. Remember the toxicity of that "new carpet smell"?) we cave a chemical soup of unknown consequences. All the chemicals we have in our bodies and that we apply as skin lotions spell disaster from ultraviolet light. That high energy light causes lots of unknown chemical reactions which break down our cells DNA and cause skin cancer. You don't see poor starving children in 3rd world countries, out in the sun all the time, developing skin cancer, no do you?

Enough ranting. Time to jump on the bike and go to the drive up across the street to make a company bank deposit. (I'm not lazy, I just like to ride.)

Back on track, a BMW with "Made in China" engine, not for me thanks.

More like "Assembled in China", according to Wikipedia:

"The new G650GS is essentially the 2007 single-cylinder F650GS brought back into production with some minor modifications and with the engine assembled by Loncin in China instead of Rotax in Austria, but still using parts manufactured by Rotax in Europe. The finished engines are shipped back to BMW in Germany where the bikes are assembled. G650GS models with the Chinese-assembled engines can be easily identified as the engines are painted black while in the earlier European-assembled engines were finished in silver. For a short period prior to discontinuation of the bike in 2007 the engines were assembled by Kymco in Taiwan."

I can't seem to find out how much of the current bike ~ which was redesigned for 2011 ~ is produced or assembled in Germany.

BMWs don't float my boat. But a BMW that had its engine from China wouldn't be an issue for me. I highly doubt BMW would just send them the schematics and leave them be. I'd imagine there is a BMW rep stationed there who oversees the QC of everything.

I don't see China doing a USSR meltdown cause the county is really only politically communist. Economically they are capitalist.

Chinese workers = skilled. HA! It is well known down here, when large pieces of made in china metal things arrive, the welds often need to be cut out and redone.

Side Note: There is a store down here called "Domayne". They sell overpriced MDF furniture. I once did a job for one of their Suppliers. They had their stuff made in Vietnam. They said, if you leave them alone the 1st shipment is good, then it gets progressively worse after that. So they have someone over in Vietnam to make sure the QC stays up to scratch.

Michael

Quote from: BaltimoreGS on October 02, 2011, 05:13:16 PM
Deserved or not, when I hear "Made In China" I automatically assume it is of inferior quality.  I wouldn't own a Chinese scooter just for that reason.  I have been eying the BMW G 650 GS as a decent little adventure tourer but something about the Made In China engine doesn't sit right with me.  Opinions??

-Jessie

I personally would go with something else-maybe in a suzuki adventure tourer. Maybe go upmarket and get the one with the extra cylinder 

I would think the QC at a BMW factory would be reasonable in China because I would think they wouldn't want to sully the propeller.

Oh as bad as the chinese are @ building stuff, they are 1000 times worse at designing it.
If you have a bunch of small parts especially electronic in nature and you just outsourced the manufacturing, it will probably be the japanese quality we know and expect in electronic items. The rest of it, all bets are off.

On a side note, I have a few chinese kit amplifiers that I have embarrassed several of my vintage fan frenemies with.

Its like Oh yea I see your $1000 used Rotel 200 watt a channel and here is my $200 worth of crap I tossed into this wood box that makes a cleaner 600 watts ...

Cool.
Buddha.

Made in China means to me that they are bankrupting America by bleeding off our money out of our borders.  Most of the world is waging financial war, and we're losing.  They can't beat us militarily right now, but if they're patient, waiting several decades, they will be able to break us down to the point where we wont be able to financially support our military.  Destroying us from within, using our own open door policy and free market consumerism.

By mass-production of goods by essentially slave labor, they are able to under-sell our domestic products, taking our money; providing cheap off-shore land and labor for our factories to take over later, further investing the money they make off us into themselves.

Even their leather is cheaply made, poorly stitched and thin.

Destroying US from within?----Guess you missed the part where they are fast drowning and choking on their own filth and air pollution, they have no answer for dealing with it on any level don't even try.  The cancer and other disease stats are through the roof---even by their standards.

And our doofus so called leader put the G.E. CEO in charge of the country's job creation, yeah, he's the guy that's shipping his company ( the one that paid no taxes ) jobs to China. And let's not forget that the guy in charge of our taxes is either a tax cheat or he can't figure out how to work Turbo Tax----take your pick.