Japan used to have a reputation for making cheap crap.China has a reputation for making cheap crap because that is what American business goes there to buy. They want to close the plant in Ohio, and make what they made there in China, and to justify it they want to pay next to nothing, and they buy cheap crap. If you look at the last 3 or 4 thousand years, pick a year and odds are (unless you picked one of the last few hundred years, that China was the richest, most powerful, most technically advanced country in the world in that year. That's the natural state of the world, there was a little aberration, power moved to Europe, and then to America, and now it's returning to it's natural home, China.