canadianvice :
My rules are simple, simply avoid buying Chinese wherever possible.
I understand almost everything is made there, but Western companies understand Western standards of quality.
The whole Chinese business model is based on manufacturing crap and making it hard to return.
I almost put off my younger brother's build because I had to get a ThermalTake PSU, but he didn't have enough money to get a different one, so I figured I'd get the warranty and hope for the best.
Western is the only thing worth buying because Chinese means Chinese quality, and that's an oxymoron.
What about the norm of a Western company selling Chinese made goods though? Surely, if the 'Western companies understand Western standards of quality', as you say, they wouldn't dream of selling something that doesn't live up to their Western standards, right?
While your rule may sound like a sensible one in theory, you really need to keep in mind that manufacturing in China these days (like most other places) is based around building to a cost. If that cost, specified by the buyer (the company who will sell the product to the consumer), is realistically too low for what they want, they're going to get a low quality product. On the other hand, if the buyer specifies certain quality factors they want, and costs the product realistically, the product manufactured for them can be of very high quality.
So while it's easy to write off everything manufactured in China as being junk, that's really not fair. Items manufactured there do vary massively in quality, and that quality is signed off on by the company (western or not) that then sells the product, so they're just as culpable for any quality issues as the manufacturer.
At its simplest, I guess you could say it all comes down to that oft said cliche: you get what you pay for.