Trust

the quote of the day is from ChicagoBoyz, about fracking, and why the US will have an advantage: the country has a good infrastructure and is honest.

Private capital will not put billions of dollars into an Iranian or Russian oil development in Siberia when a much smaller private investment in Texas, Oklahoma or Louisiana will get them more oil, sooner, with extremely low political risk and trivial infrastructure costs. (italics mine).

a similar problem can be found in China, which iis why  companies are quietly withdrawing from there. It's not just higher labor cost, but because the Chinese copy the product and then produce their own version.

In China, intellectual property rights are not strictly reinforced. For this reason, it is possible, that there are faked products on the market.

According to a 2013 survey report, more than half of the interviewees believed that intellectual property rights were not effective in China.
 Competition from Chinese domestic companies Chinese domestic companies have increasingly become strong competitors of foreign companies. 

ah, but an "expert" ignores the pirating, and says it's these companies own fault for not doing things as well as they locals can:

According to an industry expert, the strengths of Chinese domestic companies lie in their better understanding of consumer preference and their focus on affordability, marketing and innovation.

Yes.

Chinese goods are cheap... cheaper than from other countries.

And they are able to supply the smallest palenke here with their goods, often smuggled in illegally, including food products. (here, many farmers went broke because of illegally imported Chinese onions, which are cheaper because of the high use of chemical pesticides/herbicide/fertilizers etc that are discouraged or illegal here. A problem with many foods from China, even when they are labled "organic".....

and I suspect many other industries cannot survive here, not only because of local corruption discourages investment, but also because they are underpriced by Chinese price wars, helped by deliberately manipulating the Chinese currancy to keep things cheap.

Yet, anyone in the third world knows that the shoddy goods exported from China don't last long, (and the cheap medicines don't work, and the farm products are frequently recalled for having chemicals in them)...

I'll give an example. For Blood pressure, Norvasc 5mg is about a dollar a pill. A Brand name generic is 30 cents. The cheap generic found in the "generic pharmacy" is half that, but may or may not work.

making one wonder if Chinese steel has a similar problem (which is why maybe the Chinese attempt to take over the steel market may not work).

ABC(Aust) article about safety concerns after they had a couple of small bridges fail.
ConstructionManager newsletter discusses the technical details.

Heh. This is why we avoid buying low priced items, which even when they are labled as coming from elsewhere might be counterfeit. This includes medicines.

When thing last only a few months instead of lasting for years, as they did in the USA, you understand that Brand USA (or Brand Japan or Brand Korea) has an advantage.

True, the slumdwellers are still stuck with the cheap stuff, but the growing middle class will seek quality over price, since high quality goods are cheaper in the long run.