I would expect these quality standards to be met by Chinese manufactured Michelins, which were OEM on my Chinese manufactured Audi A6, neither of which are exported.
Most European, Japanese, and Korean companies manufacturing in China, for the market in China, have these process quality programs in place. We imposed them on our Chinese partners. Chinese consumers understand these differences and will pay premium prices for Japanese, Korean, German, Swiss and Swedish branded products manufactured locally, knowing that the products meet the standards of the brand-owning partners.
The real problems with Chinese manufactured exports for the U.S. market is that the importers are buying at the lowest prices they can get, having little involvement with the manufacturing source beyond the handshake and the contract.
China is beginning to understand this, and starting export quality Chinese brands (Haier being one example in appliances) learning to do their own marketing, manufacturing at higher cost to produce better quality, making up for it by eliminating the U.S.-side partners and middlemen whose emphasis on lowest cost for highest margins stands at the root of the quality problems.
Just as with our earlier experiences with Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the issue is not that the sources cannot or will not manufacture higher quality products, it is that the importers who set product specifications are asking for low costs and accepting junk.
Back to the original post, you must take advice from Tire Rack in the context of what it is, a marketing tool to convince you to buy what they want to sell you. That does not mean it is bad advice.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
