there are a lot of chinese. But the industry to produce high quality equipment with low margins for errors is relatively new. And quality control is often not very strict. Volume is not quality. While it is acceptable now for a DVD or MP3 player to quit functioning after a few months, as the thing is incredibly cheap, it is not acceptable for equipment used in a professional environment. There are some microphone companies from china that are doing a great job. But these companies had to fight hard to reach this state of production. As China is a very big, but fragmented country, with no centrally controlled economic guidance, I doubt it very much that a lot of companies will be able to reach a level of manufacturing soon that has been reached in the northern americas Japan and northern europe in the past two decades. As China enters a new era with a demand for high quality products, things might change. Only then will the numbers start to count, and China will be a market for American, Europese, and just maybe also Japanese high quality stuff. For now they are perfectly happy with selling a lot of consumer products in high volumes. And making a lot of money with it. The consumer in the "developed" world has been trained to consume in case of doubt/anxiety/happyness, and will continue to do so. But that has hardly anything to do with the studio equipment market.
It is a waste of resources though to produce a lot of stuff that is not or hardly recyclable, and will have a lifespan of only a few months. As raw material to produce will get scarce in the coming decade, the stream of cheap DVD players, and computer components will dry up.
As for europe, we had a unique situation here, that companies making pro audio gear were supported financially by governments. Add to that the extremely high level of scientific education and craftmanship in analogue design just before the advent of the chip, and the result is amazing gear. Those companies are still here, a lot of them anyway. In the US there has been a profitable music industry, so that is why there is a lot of good gear companies there. In Japan, the level of manufacturing has been consitently high for the past two decades as well. More in synthesizers, and digital recorders than studio processors.
So I got some chinese mics, a lot of german ones. American computers, a lot of german and american outboard. German, japanese and american synths. Mixing console will be a german one from the late eightties. All of them are low maintenance quality machines, that will keep on working flawlessly for a lot of years to come.
As a daytime job I worked as an after sales manager in a company of a friend. Selling Cellphones, mp3 players dvd players. in short, consumer electronics.
It is completely normal to write off 40% off the stock of cheap DVD players inmediately for instance. why? At least 40% will stop functioning within the guarantee period of one year. And will have to be replaced with a new machine. The old broken ones end up in the garbage. spilling their toxic innards. Any attempt of getting a replacement from the supplier in China will be met by a complete silence. As soon as the product hits the stores it is obsolete anyway, because they only run one production line of the model. So it doesn't matter anyway.
As for Apple: It is turning into a Dell kinda company anyway, making high volume consumer electronics, we compared circuit boards of USA G4 and Chinese G5 and there is a noticable difference in build quality. Not that the G5 doesn't rock, it does, but to illustrate the point.
(damm mouse has 2 buttons now too)
do not mix the two. (consumer and pro) they are apples and pears. Being special and individualistic in approach pays in pro audio. Of course if the stuff from china is good enough and has support and is special, I'll use it. But I doubt if it will happen, before global economics take another turn.
sofar my flawed analasys. hope it is of any good to someone
oh and my rating: as for the current situation: 5