I wish I could find the article, but I read an excellent write up of Chinese manufacturing by an expat fixer a couple years ago.
The suggestions were basically: (1) don't think about manufacturing in China unless you visit the factory, owners, and engineers; (2) preferably, have someone onsite during manufacturing runs to do initial QA and refuse delivery if required; (3) assume the other party will cut costs anywhere you permit them to; (4) assume quality will drift cheaper, even if the previous batch was perfect.
A good friend does some manufacturing there for his business, and spends about half of the year over there coordinating.
So, yeah, some random order off the internet from another country? Routed through Taiwan? You're not going to have a good time.
The suggestions were basically: (1) don't think about manufacturing in China unless you visit the factory, owners, and engineers; (2) preferably, have someone onsite during manufacturing runs to do initial QA and refuse delivery if required; (3) assume the other party will cut costs anywhere you permit them to; (4) assume quality will drift cheaper, even if the previous batch was perfect.
A good friend does some manufacturing there for his business, and spends about half of the year over there coordinating.
So, yeah, some random order off the internet from another country? Routed through Taiwan? You're not going to have a good time.