An immediate relative of mine worked at the Hillside Workshops in Dunedin, at the time the Chinese were given a contract to build the passenger carriages. I remember very clearly the stories he told me, when the carriages arrived:
every single one of them had to be rebuilt. Welds that should have run the length of plates were often just enough to get it to hold together, and not the full length. Pipe were substituted for solid metal bars. Low quality steel was used, stuff that would disintegrate when struck with a hammer by one of the engineers. The "cheap" contracts that the National Government sought ended up costing much more than what it would have cost them to build locally.
I wouldn't be very keen to ride on the high speed Chinese rail networks.
Li Keqiang admits China has a quality problem, and it's becoming a state priority to address that.
It's getting better. Jet brand machine tools used to have huge quality problems around 2002, and now they mostly work out of the box. It was clear at one time that Jet was shipping their rejects, but that seems to have stopped. They're still below Hardinge, but up there with Delta now.
every single one of them had to be rebuilt. Welds that should have run the length of plates were often just enough to get it to hold together, and not the full length. Pipe were substituted for solid metal bars. Low quality steel was used, stuff that would disintegrate when struck with a hammer by one of the engineers. The "cheap" contracts that the National Government sought ended up costing much more than what it would have cost them to build locally.
I wouldn't be very keen to ride on the high speed Chinese rail networks.